Celestial Navigation to Howland Island (4K)

1 year ago
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This was just meant to be a little video demonstrating how one might navigate an aircraft with just the sun, a clock, an averaging sextant, an almanac, and a compass. This isn't meant to be a tutorial despite how tedious this video might get at times--at least I refrained from demonstrating crab angle calculations and other minutia. After all, I'm still learning celestial navigation myself--am a complete newbie--learning primarily from Electron Volt's tutorial he's included with his sextant app on flightsim.to (See link below).

Using PMDG's excellent model of the DC-6 to fly this 7 hour flight. You can purchase from their website here: https://pmdg.com/pmdg-dc-6-for-msfs/

As stated in the video, Howland Island was chosen as a destination not only because of the historical aspect of being associated with Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan's attempt, but because that island truly does pose a challenge, as it's so tiny and FLAT. I added some simple scenery here showing three gravel runways. All but the longest runway was ready for operation when Amelia and Fred departed. This can be downloaded here: https://flightsim.to/file/28052/howland-island-kamakaiwi-field

I chose Aropa Airport as the departing airport--in part because I called the area home the first 18 years of my life, and upgraded the airport a little from its default: https://flightsim.to/file/22004/aropa-kieta-airport-aykt

The Sextant and Drift Meter simulated here, was written by "Electron Volt". You can find these two apps for Microsoft Flight Simulator here:
CellNav for MSFS: https://flightsim.to/file/17738/celnav-for-msfs-celestial-navigation-sextant
Drift Meter for MSFS: https://flightsim.to/file/19402/simple-driftmeter-for-msfs

Ships used in Howland Island Scenery was used with with permission from Henrik Nielsen. To download these ships and their AI to use with MSFS, please click here: https://flightsim.to/file/9529/global-ai-ship-traffic-msfs-v1

"Little NavMap" by Alexander Barthel is a free mapping app, which was used in this video. It is feature rich and seamlessly connects with Flight Simulator (and other simulators). You can download it for free from: https://www.littlenavmap.org

The Nautical Almanac
https://thenauticalalmanac.com/

Music:
"Seven Days of Flying" by Remember the Future
"Epic Moments" by Immersive Music
"Exhale" by Jeremy Blake
"Saving the World" by Aaron Kenny
"Inception" by Aakash Gandhi
"Stranger Danger" by Francis Preve

Darkness is Coming by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100584
Artist: http://incompetech.com/

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