Using a Hand-held Calculator for Ship's Position Comparison

Extract

The author's personal experiences under operational conditions have been with the CBM (Commodore Business Machines) S.R. 4148R, which has proved quite adequate for position comparisons in a surface warship fitted with a Magnavox satellite navigation system primarily used as a DR recorder. It is fed with ship's course and speed, corrections to the positions found being up-dated from satellite passes. Occasionally the criteria for up-dating from a satellite pass are not met and the system may run on DR for several hours without up-dates. Since the system is unable to compensate automatically for tidal or current drift and set or for leeway, the accuracy of the DR will deteriorate with age. The possibility of component malfunction, albeit temporary, may also contribute to DR error. In such conditions a series of astronomical observations is made; the calculator is capable of finding the average of such a series if required.