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I wasn't going to learn navigation the "Hey, Chief, show me navigation" way...I knew that. I just wanted to be where I could use what I learned...teaching myself the old time tested way - studying it.
I was no stranger to the Bowditch, my father having taken some courses in the "Navy Y" during the war, and introducing me to it during Jr. High School. However, that was "correcting courses", and the "sailings"...no celestial stuff.
Now it was applying for USAFI courses in Celestial Navigation, Navigation I and II, and on the side, their wonderful course on "Compass Compensation"...all of which I completed under the watchful eye of the C/O...my test results went to him.
As with computers, no one can show you how to use one...properly that is. You have to "buy the books"...like a good friend tells me. Not only just by the "Dumby" books, which are good just to get by with, but the ones that take you back to Bolean Albebra, and Binary Arithmetic...you want to know how it all works from zeros, and ones. Start with Machine Language, then into Assembly Language, etc..
That's how it goes with navigation...you're just playing at it until you have a good grasp on Spherical Trig...you want to understand even the simplest like Napier's Analogies of the Right Spherical Triangle...don't you. I did, and made a hobby out of it.
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