• pc486@reddthat.com
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    7 months ago

    It’s a bummer this article pushes aside the importance of calculating bearings. Figuring bearings remains a required skill in both sea and air navigation. GPS works very well, but you don’t want to depend entirely upon it when there’s life and property at risk. Sextants, chronographs, and navigational maps remain onboard many ships.

    To not be so negative, here’s something interesting the article does raise but didn’t mention: azimuthal maps are regularly projected at any place on earth. Azimithual projected at a radio station this makes pointing directional antennas intuitive and fast. It’s also helpful in grasping how a directional antenna will behave as their radiation patterns are drawn in polar coordinates and hence can be drawn on top of an azimithual map.