10 May 2011 by Tristan Gooley
My thanks to Mark Evans who not only flew over from Oman for a course, but also sent me this great time lapse photo from Oman.
Mark is the General Manager of Outward Bound Oman, which does not sound like the worst job in the world to me! Outward Bound Oman, under Mark’s leadership, is teaching young Omanis many outdoor skills, including traditional methods of desert navigation.
Time for a bit of fun. Which way are we looking in this picture and why?
Answers by email please. I’ll post the correct answer in a couple of days.
Update.12/05/11.
We are looking just south of west. approx 255 degrees. Orion’s belt can be seen setting about one third the way in from the right. The arcing to the right is anticlockwise around the North Celestial Pole, to the left the stars are arcing clockwise around the South Celestial…
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Tags: Betelgeuse, castor, desert navigation, oman, orion, outdoor navigation course, outward bound, pollux, Procyon, Sirius |
20 February 2009 by Tristan Gooley
During a short outdoor navigation course yesterday, nature once again enjoyed mocking me a little.
While discussing methods of using the wind to navigate, I had explained how wind direction is surprisingly constant over a period of hours and although small shifts are common, large changes are much less so, and complete reversals very rare. The key is understanding that a significant change in wind direction will be caused by a change in the relationship between your location and a nearby weather system, ie. a front moving through. The change in weather is usually gradual enough to foretell of wind shifts, but not always…
Yesterday we witnessed a complete flip, the wind direction shifted almost 180 degrees from south-southwest to north in one hour. This was something that I had just proclaimed to be almost unheard of, unless there was a complete change in weather. The weather had not yet…
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Tags: outdoor navigation course, using the wind to navigate, wind direction |
