# Time to dust of the Nories?



## Anchorman

Interesting article in February Telegraph regarding GPS disruption. Its on page 2.

http://content.yudu.com/Library/A1v...autilusint.org/Resources/Pages/Telegraph.aspx


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## doug rowland

Paperless ships.. I don,t beleive it..what happened to charts(always a necessity in the early days of ECDIS). Perhaps I'll have to come out of retirement and do some proper navigation and ship handling again!!


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## Strachan

*Paperless Ships*

It had to come. Aeroplanes don't carry charts or sextants or Nories/Burtons and they seem to be able to find their way about.
It's just natural resistance. Remember the day when you first pulled out your Aircraft Navigation Tables for the first time on the bridge of a merchantman?
Didn't the 'old man' go off his brain .... "This is a ship, laddie, not an aeroplane! Get those things out of my sight and get out your PROPER tables and work the sight out properly."
I remember coasting Glenogle as a Middy. We had a Decca 606 True Motion radar and nobody on the bridge had ever seen one before. I'd just come off the Liverpool radar course (for 2nd Mates) with the same set. I got stuck on it from the time of departure to arrival next port at 23 knots in dense fog ('Speed' Carney was Master) but every time the 'old man' came for a look I had to turn it back to relative display for him  After a week of criss-crossing the Channel he had the hang of it and I couldn't get near the set.
I would welcome all these changes if I were still at sea. Navigators of today regard Marc St.Hilaire as we used to regard Lunar Distances ..... just for interest.


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## Duncan McG

*Paperless ships.*

Strachs,
My Norries is a 1941 version and on occasion still gets pulled out for the odd trig problem. Must admit I have to read the intructions for the "log"bits, but surprise surprise the results a still correct.
Possibly see you on the 1st March ?
Phineas


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## peter3807

Still have my old Nories and many other books I have collected on the "arcane" discipline of celestial navigation. Includes some interesting applications of differential calculus to working sights. M St Helair still takes some beating. 
Does any one agree that taking sights was merely a confirmation that the original planned route was working. That is, sailing by DR from say Cape Wrath to Belle Isle, taking into account ships speed at full ahead, slip, set, leeway. Point is, when all is taken into account how far off would we have been without taking sights. I cannot recall making any major alterations even after many days without sights.


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## Varley

peter3807 said:


> Still have my old Nories and many other books I have collected on the "arcane" discipline of celestial navigation. Includes some interesting applications of differential calculus to working sights. M St Helair still takes some beating.
> Does any one agree that taking sights was merely a confirmation that the original planned route was working. That is, sailing by DR from say Cape Wrath to Belle Isle, taking into account ships speed at full ahead, slip, set, leeway. Point is, when all is taken into account how far off would we have been without taking sights. I cannot recall making any major alterations even after many days without sights.


Petexx , Have you suggested that WRT Royal Majesty? I admit that the fixes she missed were GPS and not (presumably) ham bone but DR for a relatively short period put her well aground. Perhaps even a couple of console bearings would have been better than just DR. 

David V


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## Duncan McG

*Norries etc*

re Peter 3807, DR only for long ocean passages ??

Not too sure it would have been condusive to good health for a Bahia Blanca - Pulau We composite GC via 45 S in 1965.

Stay dry..


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## Ron Stringer

peter3807 said:


> That is, sailing by DR from say Cape Wrath to Belle Isle, taking into account ships speed at full ahead, slip, set, leeway. Point is, when all is taken into account how far off would we have been without taking sights. I cannot recall making any major alterations even after many days without sights.


Did that run in the other direction in December 1964 on the Cairngowan and had a miserable crossing without a single break in the cloud cover. I was taking Consol bearings that were routinely disregarded and some days later, picked up the Butt of Lewis DF station. Those bearings were disregarded too and we only altered course when the radar picked up land dead ahead (and on either bow) and we found we were some 40 miles South of the intended track. 

The DF had been showing Butt of Lewis steadily broadening on the port bow for a long time but in the words of the old man, "You can never trust those things."

We went through the Pentland Firth and eventually arrived in Grangemouth still never having seen sun or stars in the 11 days of that trip, from letting go to making fast.


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## chadburn

doug rowland said:


> Paperless ships.. I don,t beleive it..what happened to charts(always a necessity in the early days of ECDIS). Perhaps I'll have to come out of retirement and do some proper navigation and ship handling again!!


Never mind paperless ship's Doug from what I gather the American's have a crewless Warship on trial's, unless I have read it wrong, known as the EDD 964 ex Paul F Foster.


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## Split

Strachan said:


> It had to come. Aeroplanes don't carry charts or sextants or Nories/Burtons and they seem to be able to find their way about.
> It's just natural resistance. Remember the day when you first pulled out your Aircraft Navigation Tables for the first time on the bridge of a merchantman?
> Didn't the 'old man' go off his brain .... "This is a ship, laddie, not an aeroplane! Get those things out of my sight and get out your PROPER tables and work the sight out properly."
> I remember coasting Glenogle as a Middy. We had a Decca 606 True Motion radar and nobody on the bridge had ever seen one before. I'd just come off the Liverpool radar course (for 2nd Mates) with the same set. I got stuck on it from the time of departure to arrival next port at 23 knots in dense fog ('Speed' Carney was Master) but every time the 'old man' came for a look I had to turn it back to relative display for him  After a week of criss-crossing the Channel he had the hang of it and I couldn't get near the set.
> I would welcome all these changes if I were still at sea. Navigators of today regard Marc St.Hilaire as we used to regard Lunar Distances ..... just for interest.


May I make a confession? I've navigated many ships all over the place and have never heard of Marc St.Hilaire. He wasn't going in my day, was he? 1948-62?


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## Pat Thompson

Greetings,

There is a bit about her HERE (scroll down the page to the section FATE)


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## Hugh Wilson

I bought a pair of trousers about 6 weeks back from A. Hume, Gentleman's Outfitters, Kelso, and they have a Marc St. Hilaire designer/maker label on the back. Could it be that in the old days navigation was rather like the early days of 'flying by the seat of your pants'??


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## sparkie2182

"I bought a pair of trousers"

Somewhere to put your "meridional parts"??


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## peter3807

Varley said:


> Petexx , Have you suggested that WRT Royal Majesty? I admit that the fixes she missed were GPS and not (presumably) ham bone but DR for a relatively short period put her well aground. Perhaps even a couple of console bearings would have been better than just DR.
> 
> David V


Dave,

Sorry but been out of touch for a while. My reference to DR was to long passage without sights. 
My experience of coastal navigation relied on three point bearings and, when possible, supported by Decca.
Please excuse my ignorance but it has been a while, what are console bearings. Are you referring to DF.

Regards 

Peter


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## peter3807

Split said:


> May I make a confession? I've navigated many ships all over the place and have never heard of Marc St.Hilaire. He wasn't going in my day, was he? 1948-62?


Just another method of working out your east west thing, step up for long by chron, fashionable in the 70,s before satellites took over.


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## Varley

Peter,

Ah, Consol (spelling corrected by Ron Stringer)!

More like before our time than after it! Although still in then in the Admiralty list of RS - don't know when it faded completely.

I have found a good description on http://jproc.ca/hyperbolic/consol.html

An antique system whereby one could tell the ships bearing (referenced from 'beacon') by counting to when the dots turned to dashes. An interference technique with no special receiver/processor required onboard. I thought that I had used this without special charts but in reviewing the site I see special charts were involved.

There used to be a good simulation of this in the Kensington science museum using two lamps. One flashing and the other steady surrounded by a rotating shutter. Not used seriously in my day (I only remember DF being used in anger as a double check for finding SW pass into Mississippi, that was 1972) 

David V


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## Farmer John

peter3807 said:


> Just another method of working out your east west thing, step up for long by chron, fashionable in the 70,s before satellites took over.


I am more than 40 years away from this, but my recollection is that Marc St.Hilaire was the guy who first did the thing that later sights were based on, rather like, Harrison made the first chronometers, but later chronometers were not of the Harrison pattern. I have my notes somewhere...

Was a running fix the more common way, based on Marc St.Hilaire?

No, not in there, I think I was going to copy it up later, doesn't seem much point now. Still, it is nice to recall how to check for errors on a sextant, and don't forget, when it's on, it's off and when it's off, it's on.

By the way, Strachan, I did one trip on the Glenogle as a middy, I remember it as being all nice and new, about 1967 and my last trip.

Shoot me down on this, I can't find my car keys half the time now, despit always putting them in the same place.


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## Strachan

Farmer John said:


> By the way, Strachan, I did one trip on the Glenogle as a middy, I remember it as being all nice and new, about 1967 and my last trip.


My experience with Glenogle was Jan 1963 getting the last few days of necessary sea time to go for 2nd Mates.


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## slick

All,
CONSOL, wasn't it from the Spanish "From the Sun" as one of the stations was in Spain?

Yours aye,

slick


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## Varley

Slick,

Doesn't seem as simple as that, There was a station in Spain (link has photos) as well as Norway and France. Started as German development of US American Radio Range system which they called Sonne. Allies used the German stations with their own maps and called it CONSOL (but, yes, this came from the Sol, the Sun). Better follow the link.

http://jproc.ca/hyperbolic/consol.html


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## sparkie2182

I believe the Tx's were located in German CONsulates in Spain.


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## Hank

Varley said:


> Peter,
> 
> I thought that I had used this without special charts but in reviewing the site I see special charts were involved.
> 
> David V


I'm quite sure that we used to get bearings of Ploneis consol station without the use of charts. Crossed with d.f. bearings of Bishop's Rock it used to give us some idea of where we were when making the land after crossing the Bay of Biscay under 8/8 cloud cover. Can't remember how we did it.
Cheers, John


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## Peter Martin

slick said:


> All,
> CONSOL, wasn't it from the Spanish "From the Sun" as one of the stations was in Spain?
> 
> Yours aye,
> 
> slick


Also Ploenis in Britanny and Bushmills in N Ireland (266 Kc/s). Used it once or twice for fun when Snr 2nd Mate told me the history of it.


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## Robert Hilton

I once had a Nories dated 1888, I think, and it included a complete treatise on navigation. Sight reduction was by Admiral Sumner's New Method. This was quite a long calculation. Marc St. Hilaire later spotted that it could be much shortened and still give the same result.


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## Spurling Pipe

Hank said:


> I'm quite sure that we used to get bearings of Ploneis consol station without the use of charts. Crossed with d.f. bearings of Bishop's Rock it used to give us some idea of where we were when making the land after crossing the Bay of Biscay under 8/8 cloud cover. Can't remember how we did it.
> Cheers, John


I too have vague memories of this Consul station.


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## Bilge rat

I remember using 'Consol', crouched in a quiet corner counting and listening for the moment when the dots changed to dashes but it was never as simple as that as they tended to merge. This meant you had to write down your count, add them together subtract the resulting count from 60 then halve the difference and add that to each count. Not very accurate, and you generally nodded off whilst listening. Just as you are probably
nodding off reading my post.


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## 5036

Sonne invented by the incredibly talented Germans in WW2. It was all about counting dots and dashes as explained here (along with the name.)

http://jproc.ca/hyperbolic/consol.html

For those of you looking for a deeper technological explanation, look here:

http://www.radarpages.co.uk/mob/navaids/consol/consol1.htm

We used it for some very early oil exploration work although how we found our way back escapes me.


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## Bob Murdoch

Used the Consol system on one trip across the Atlantic in 1959. The 2nd mate found it very useful in fact he had suggested I try for it. From memory, no special charts. Also used the DF frequently during 1958-60 on British ships. Usually with very good results which checked out with the eventual visual bearings. It, the DF, was very useful during a season of runningup the St Lawrence, Sydney to Montreal with all the fog present in that neck of the woods. Again always tied in with our eventual visual bearings.
Cheers Bob


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## janmike

Believe consol finished when the IRA blew up Bushmills. Used it many times to find that we were in the North Atlantic in the 1950's
Mike


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## ninabaker

When I was on Cable Venture in 1979 there was another 3/o who had come back to sea after a few years ashore as a computer programmer. There was almost no normal navigation on the cable ship - all by early satnav and radar. he was so bored he reprogrammed the satnav to produce charts for everyone's "biorythms"!


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## 8575

I recall trying all sorts of permutations to get a 'fix', well a fix of a sort. Consol crossed with DF or sun sight position line. In other situations crossing a visual bearing of a distant island eg Mauritius with a sun sight position line. DF bearing with sun sight position line.

I don't know about other companies but the crowd I worked for were happy for us to buy US Charts of the US Gulf. This was handier than one might suppose because all the fixed production platforms were charted and the patterns they made could be identified on radar and thus positions obtained. As I recall the UK charts only charted the safety fairways. I did sail with one master who was highly sceptical of the US chart idea and made the deck officers take a series of sights to check against the US charts and the platform positions; needless to say the intercepts were miniscule!

Also recall when 2nd mate 1974ish, departing from Rotterdam and heading down channel to Land's End without seeing land or sky until we cleared Land's End! Achieved by doubling up watches and using DF the whole way - in the days when the DF stations were grouped and the good old Marconi gear could be set to auto. Radar performance was useless and intermittent. Seem to recall every time we heard the sound of an engine out in the fog we stopped or went to dead slow. Happy days. After Land's End it was back to sun sights and stars with air nav reduction tables


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