Anyone particulary good with navigation?
Posted: May 25, 2006, 1:33 pm
Warning: This is a long, rambling post that is only here to fuel my speculations about the show Lost. Please feel free to ignore it entirely.
Is anyone particularly familiar with navigating using a compass? I'm less interested in N, S, E, W; my question is more about the numbers (bearing?). I've used a compass on the water in conjunction with nautical charts where I can line up a number on the compass with a number on the map and end up where I want to go, but I'm having trouble picturing it while sitting at my desk, and I'm apparently using the wrong google search terms to find useful information.
This question is specifically in reference to something on Lost last night, and as it may be a spoiler, I'll hide it below.
[hide=Click here if you already saw Lost or do not care about being spoiled]While I can't say with certainty that I should be using reality as a frame of reference to the show, several signs point to the island that the people are on being near one of the poles (I'm leaning toward the south pole). The main thing that influences my belief is that a guy got into a sailboat and travelled west for like two and a half weeks and ended up back at the same island. Assuming he was, in fact, travelling west, I'm guessing that he'd have to be on a line of longitude where there were no other land masses and that it would be feasible to circumnavigate the globe in a couple weeks. In my mind that points toward being near a pole. Also, if you haven't seen the show, the plane was leaving Australia and heading for Los Angeles before going off course for a couple hours and eventually crashing, so I would think that we can reasonably assume that they are somewhere north of Antarctica in the South Pacific.
Anyway, last night someone was instructed to get on a boat and follow bearing 325 and that he would run into people who would rescue him. Assuming the above is all that you know about your starting point, does that bearing tell you anything about where you might end up, or are there too many variables?[/hide]
Is anyone particularly familiar with navigating using a compass? I'm less interested in N, S, E, W; my question is more about the numbers (bearing?). I've used a compass on the water in conjunction with nautical charts where I can line up a number on the compass with a number on the map and end up where I want to go, but I'm having trouble picturing it while sitting at my desk, and I'm apparently using the wrong google search terms to find useful information.
This question is specifically in reference to something on Lost last night, and as it may be a spoiler, I'll hide it below.
[hide=Click here if you already saw Lost or do not care about being spoiled]While I can't say with certainty that I should be using reality as a frame of reference to the show, several signs point to the island that the people are on being near one of the poles (I'm leaning toward the south pole). The main thing that influences my belief is that a guy got into a sailboat and travelled west for like two and a half weeks and ended up back at the same island. Assuming he was, in fact, travelling west, I'm guessing that he'd have to be on a line of longitude where there were no other land masses and that it would be feasible to circumnavigate the globe in a couple weeks. In my mind that points toward being near a pole. Also, if you haven't seen the show, the plane was leaving Australia and heading for Los Angeles before going off course for a couple hours and eventually crashing, so I would think that we can reasonably assume that they are somewhere north of Antarctica in the South Pacific.
Anyway, last night someone was instructed to get on a boat and follow bearing 325 and that he would run into people who would rescue him. Assuming the above is all that you know about your starting point, does that bearing tell you anything about where you might end up, or are there too many variables?[/hide]
