[FSX] Tutorial - Navigating with the Bubble Sextant Gauge - Part 1
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.ย. 2024
- A look at how the excellent freeware bubble sextant add-on gauge works... how to take shots and plot lines of position in Google Earth. Like classic planes in the sim? Try some classic navigation!
Get the gauge (and documentation) here:
www.kronzky.inf...
Part 2, using the sextant on an actual flight, can be found here:
• [FSX] Tutorial - Navig...
RESOURCES:
Online Almanac for position of celestial bodies (optional, gauge works without worrying about this):
aa.usno.navy.mi...
Extensive primer on dead reckoning techniques, as well as celestial navigation and sextant use... as well as a great glimpse into history! The 1940s wartime Army Air Force navigator's training manual... download the pdf of the book called "Air Navigation" (first item on page):
aafcollection.i...
Excellent online E6B-style calculator... wind, time/speed/distance, performance, altimetry etc... use the Aviation Calculations link on the left.
www.luizmonteir...
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Thanks for this. I am not a Sim guy, but I am an 18,000 hour airline pilot. Over the years I have toyed with stellar navigation, and have learnt the constellations (comes from spending an enourmous time staring out of windows! As an aside, the best reference I have seen is "The Stars: A New Way to See Them by H. A. Rey"), but I've never bothered to buy or use a bubble sextant. I found this overview very interesting.
Love this! In my Navy days, the sextant was used all the time. Tradition mostly... But super (geeky) cool. I also did soundings using the fathometer, headphones and a stopwatch. Nice job man.
Hey just cheking in to say a big Thank you! For ages i was not happy with myself flying a, lets say, L-049 or a B-377 across the ocean without a GPS (and ocean Weather stations that helps, but not so much) a few weeks ago i said "ok enought! lets do this!" And your video is amazing. Thank you and amazing work! I Ploted charts for the love of god, and i'm drawing lines by hand! hahaha
Nice, easy to understand tutorial. Don’t think anyone could explain it any simpler. I was little disappointed that you can’t point the gauge at something in the FSX sky and take a reading but it’s still pretty neat. I’ve always been fascinated by celestial navigation, and curious about the bubble sextant for FSX. I’m amazed how people used to navigate all over the world with decent accuracy, and I already understood your concept of accuracy mentioned in the beginning. I’ve heard the best marine navigators could determine their position down to a square nautical mile which as you said is more than enough, if visibility is more than a few miles and if it isn’t you couldn’t take a reading anyway. For aviation, you just need to get within range of an NDB or VOR (or range back in the day). It’s amazing how accurate dead reckoning alone can be, given good winds aloft forecasts.
this was cool helps me figure out what information I should be able to get out of my antique Lancaster bubble sextant.
Thrilled you made this! I am just getting into over water flights with the Constellation and REALLY wanted to make use of sextant shots. Your clear and in depth explanation was exactly what I needed to get started. Much appreciated.
Another Basic to CelNav. Is that you need a “Clear Blue” sky to indentify your Celestial body.
Inspiring tutorial. Very helpful. I started out with gps coupled to the simulator. All very useful but slightly boring apart from different approaches, moved over to an FMC, worked back to a really good ins. This was more fun and finally managed the 747 from FACT to EGKK with 86 manually entered waypoint coordinates. Now this will take me back and be even more fun. Anyway I have a vested interest. My son has a yacht, so I harp on about Celestial Navigation. This is a great.start. Thank you.
Nice video! You will find this video I made VERY interesting. Perhaps we can work together to solve Earhart! Her navigator was using a sextant and pioneered using it for flight, but I believe he screwed up and their plane is likely under the water roughly 200 miles SOUTH of Baker island. Their sunrise LOP was taken RIGHT WHERE the ANTIMERIDIAN (dateline) crossed the equator, and they never got a accurate radio fix to confirm the esimates he took all night as they flew to Howland. You will like this video!
Oops, here is the link: th-cam.com/video/4bFJxhFN354/w-d-xo.html
Gary LaPook flies planes and uses a Bubble sextant for real.
Excellent video! I plan to watch the rest so I can (stars of flightsim aligning for P3D) fly a P-38 from Australia across Polynesia to South America. One tip about Google Earth, if you uncheck "Terrain" at the bottom of "Layers", the entire Earth should go totally to mean sea level.
A good bubble sextant is the Bendix AN-5851. They're on eBay all the time.
Glad you made your tutoriel, that's great !I'm looking forward for more (like a timelapsed night flight showing subsequent star shots...) so keep up the good work 😀Francois
Very much appreciate this tutorial, but I have a problem with the LOPs all lining up on top of each other.
Installed the gauge without any trouble as a replacement for the GPS in the Jahn/Visser C-47V3, as you did. (FWIW my voice is the copilot's, a friend’s is the pilot, and the saucy stew's is my wife.)
Ran through Norbert's tutorials, and layed out a course and waypoints in Google Earth for a flight from Midway to Hawaii.
But two hours into my first flight, using the almanac to pick stars for the sake of realism, all three shots produced LOPs that were parallel and on top of each other.
Back on the ground at the end of the runway at Midway, recreating this tutorial and using 0, 90 and 45 azimuths the same thing happened. (I doubled checked my assumed position of about 28 N 177W but it was entered correctly as -177
Anyone have any thoughts on what I might be doing wrong or what may be broken?
Tom Harnish Hmm... when you say the sextant produced parallel LOPs, do you mean the LOPs were plotted on Google Earth to be parallel, or in the built - in chart that's part of the sextant gauge?
If using the built - in chart, I'll admit I've seen unexpected results with that too. The first 3 shots plot correctly, but I don't think I understand how to clear them and start over for the next fix. If this is what's happening to you, try plotting them on Google Earth.
If you're plotting the LOPs in Google Earth... it's not really the sextant gauge that's producing parallel LOPs ;-). Remember that an LOP is always plotted perpendicular to the azimuth of the shot, so if you're plotting LOPs off 3 different azimuths and they end up parallel, you have to be getting mixed up on a step somewhere. Maybe try "plotting along" with the tutorial again, and let us know how it turns out?
Yup, in the built-in chart. All the lines were on top pf each other. How to clear them is, I think, the issue. They're fine in Google Earth. I say, "don't sweat the small stuff." Love flying with it, and the issue is, in retrospect, not worth mentioning.
Ok, yep, sounds like the same issue I've seen. If you ever do sort out how to reset the built-in chart for another 3 shots, and you think of it, c'mon back here and tell us all how. I'm sure I'm not the only one interested. Thanks!
Thank you for an excellent tutorial!
Very good indeed. Thank you !
love this
Hello AJ. Thanks for this tutorial. I'm wondering if you have some time to discuss flight planning with these old war birds? I've got a project I'm working on and I could use your expertise.
Sure, though I don't know if "expertise" is the right word ;). But what's going on with your project?
Might be easier to discuss via Discord or at least email. Short version, I'd like your opinion on flight planning (what I will file with ATC) when I do an oceanic leg using WW2 era navigation tools in my C47. My email is brantnyberg@gmail.com @@ajcrowley7170
I think your UTC for nautical twilight for June 1 2016 is wrong. The Almanac has it at about 04:25. The zone description for Hawaii (155 degrees west longitude) is + 10. That would make UTC at N.T. 14:25. So the pre planed bodies would be different. I know you were showing a quick example but wanted to correct incase it caused any confusion. What an excellent Tutorial. I'm a recreational sailor and don't know if there are any simulators for boaters. Does anyone know of one?
ken Passeri Yessir, you are correct! To be honest, I wasn't really shooting for dawn, just something after midnight and before dawn, to ensure we were looking up a nighttime sky. I was tired, ready to be done with the video, and greatly over-complicated trying to figure out what time would work ;-).
I'm also a sailor. I don't know about specific boating sims, but boating in FSX/P3D is a thing. There are some good freeware boat models out there, and at least one payware shop that has some sailboats as well as powerboats. I've always kind of wanted to try sailing in FSX..
deltasimstudio.com/
Return to Misty Moorings has an "on the water" section with routes and I think some freeware boats, focused on Southeast Alaska.
ken Passeri: 14:45 UT = 4:25 LMT + 10h 20m. (According to the "RISING AND SETTING PHENOMENA" explanation and the "CONVERSION OF ARC TO TIME" table in "The Nautical Almanac").
hello, have many thanks for sharing you knowledge about celestial navigation. regarding the sun how should it be possibel to have three lines of position with only one star being used? by thinking of the use of a sextant i could really have only one shot, as i have to direct the azimuth position of the sextant directly opposite to the clestial body and therefore need three clestial bodies to fix the position with three LOPs? thanks in advance for any clarification in case i got it all wrong.
You are exactly right - with one star (the sun) you can only get one LOP, which makes daytime position fixing more of a challenge. There is one time during the day when you can get both a latitude and longitude with one measurement of the sun - that's called a "local noon sight".
There is also a way to combine dead reckoning and celestial nav during the day to achieve a position fix that can either be looked at as a degraded celestial fix, or an improved dead reckoning fix. It involves taking a sun shot, waiting a few hours so the sun azimuth changes, and taking a second shot... then plotting the 1st LOP by mathematically advancing it forward along your course line the appropriate distance based on your speed and time. Look up a "sun run sun" fix.
At sea, a navigator would use a schedule of observations to keep a running position fix, something like: a 3 star fix at dawn, a mid-morning sun LOP, a local noon fix, a mid afternoon sun LOP which can be combined with the mid morning LOP for a sun-run-sun fix, then a 3 star fix at dusk and more overnight if the horizon is visible or you're using a sextant like they did in aircraft, with a lighted bubble horizon.
Fun stuff!
@@ajcrowley7170 have many thanks for your swift response respective for all your hints, all of wiche are very helpfull in grasping this issue. have a nice time and once again your tutorial is awesome and i am looking foreward to watching your second part of it.
Hi, I have a quick question... AJ, how did you get your Sextant6 gauge to be semi-transparent in your plane? What entry did you add to your panel.cfg to do that? ...or did you alter the xml for the gauge itself? I don't see any reference to how to do it in the package itself.
You know, that wasn't intentional and I remember it bugging me when it happened haha. I finally found an entry in FSX display settings for opacity of 2d panels and jacked it back to 100% to get rid of the transparency. I don't know what p3d might have for a corresponding setting if that's what you're using. I'm sure that setting does just write an opacity value into a cfg file somewhere, but I don't know where, sorry.
@@ajcrowley7170 I know there is a way to make an individual gauge less than 100% opaque via the panel.cfg file, but I can't remember how, now. Thanks, AJ!
nice video is it possible to use this gauge in fs9 (flight simulator 2004)
Yes. It originated for fs9.
where they installed this on a Lancaster ?
I don't exactly know. The bubble sextant (or octant) isn't exactly installed in any aircraft, it's a handheld instrument used to measure the angle of a celestial body above the horizon. Older aircraft designed when this was a primary navigation method usually have an "astrodome", a glass bubble on top of the aircraft somewhere that gives the navigator a 360 degree view of the sky. In combat aircraft, a gun turret could be used.
AJ, Have you ever tried "LittleNavMap"? It's the quality of Plan G and FSNavigator, only it's FREE. Beats the heck out of Google. I don't use Google for the simple reason, they won't let developers use their maps anymore without PAYING FOR THEM.
Plan G is free too, isn't it? It was when I downloaded it. I'm pretty sure I tried LittleNavMap once, but didn't stick with it because, like Plan G, it didn't have a course/distance measuring tool equivalent to Google Earth's ruler tool. Maybe they've added one since? You need a tool that can replicate what you can do with a plotter on a paper chart; that is, measure a precise course and distance between any two points on the chart.
As always, we'll all use what works best for us. Personally, I don't guess I see a problem with Google expecting devs (of commercial applications, anyway) to pay for their maps; they are THEIR maps, after all. ;-)
@@ajcrowley7170 Yeah, darnit. I thought it would, but you're right, it doesn't. I'm sitting down to learn this now. Thanks for the tutorials! :D
Oh, one thing I noticed is that in Google Earth, if you uncheck the "Terrain" box in the "Primary Database" section in the left window, you'll get a 2D world, but you'll still need to turn off "3D buildings" to get the last 3D objects off the map. I don't know if the 3D building and object models would also affect lines or not. Oh, sorry, I meant you'll get a smooth sphere for earth, with no bumps. Of course that's not 2D, that would be a Mercator projection.
Would you mind possibly doing an install video on this? I can't seem to get it to work, and the readme that is included is less than helpful.
Does the gauge still work with P3D v4?
Thorolf You know, this is a good question. I'm still on FSX and haven't tried any version of P3d, but it's been reported that the sextant gauge works in earlier versions. V4, though... I think I read that it changes gauge behavior a bit? So, I don't know. It should be easy enough to try... if you or someone gives it a shot, maybe you could report back?
Alright, after a hard day and a harder night I have a freshly installed and badly performing P3d v4 up and running along with the A2A Connie now. Got both the sextant (FSX version) and the weathership gauge to run. Only a brief test so far, but the gauge shows up, the bubble bubbles and the controls appear to be working ok.
See: sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/other-flight-navigation-information/recent-landfall-approach
With GPS so easy - bubble sextant navigation - has become a lost skill.
Thank you for an excellent tutorial!