Getting around the world is a fascinating exercise.\u00a0 At first, a person\u2019s total awareness of his or her environment is the extent of as far as they can see, usually not much further beyond their crib or bedroom at first.\u00a0 Then they discover the different rooms of their home, after which follows the discovery of the back yard.<\/p>\n
Before long, they know their neighborhood and then their town.\u00a0 When they are in school, they learn about their state and that the state is part of a nation and the nation is only one of many on the globe.<\/p>\n
In studying the globe, there are facts to memorize and once learned, those facts can help one \u201cget around.\u201d\u00a0 For instance, there are 360 degrees in a circle, and 60 minutes in every degree, which then gives you 60 seconds per minute.\u00a0 Since one degree equals 60 nautical miles, one minute will equal one nautical mile.\u00a0 Multiplying all of the degrees around the circumference of the globe (360 degrees x 60 minutes), you discover a trip around the world is 21,600 nautical miles.\u00a0 Multiplied by 1.15 to determine statute miles, the world around any greatest part, is 24,840 statute miles.<\/p>\n
All pretty useless information, right?<\/p>\n
Well, consider this.<\/p>\n
The ancient Polynesians, after discovering the limits of their living quarters and then their islands, went from their island chain in the South Pacific, all the way across 5000 miles of open ocean to the middle of the Pacific to find Hawaii.\u00a0 Then they went home again.\u00a0 And back.<\/p>\n
They made this trip many times, thousands of years ago, before the development of sextants.<\/p>\n
Using their hands as rudimentary sextants and the stars, combined\u00a0with knowledge passed down in song from one generation to the next, these ancient mariners canoed from their homes to the Hawaiian Islands time and again.<\/p>\n
Today, GPS gives us the ability to find the exact fishing hole in the middle of a lake or position ourselves repeatedly over the same reef in the ocean.\u00a0 Within ten feet of the last time we were on the position.\u00a0 It seems virtually impossible to get lost in these modern days of electronic navigation.<\/p>\n
I remember one flight I flew in my A-4 out of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.\u00a0 I was out patrolling when I came across a very interesting sight.\u00a0 There, on the surface of the Caribbean Sea, almost equidistant from Cuba, Jamaica, and Haiti, was a dugout canoe with a couple of fishermen seeking their sustenance.\u00a0 I could barely see the land from my altitude of 2000 feet, so I knew they could not possibly see land from where they were.<\/p>\n
How did they get there?<\/em> I thought. And how many years have they been doing this?\u00a0 <\/em>More importantly, I wondered how they were able to find their way home.<\/p>\n Me?\u00a0 I had TACAN.<\/p>\n -30-<\/p>\n \u00a92010 J. Clark<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Getting around the world is a fascinating exercise.\u00a0 At first, a person\u2019s total awareness of his or her environment is the extent of as far as they can see, usually not much further beyond their crib or bedroom at first.\u00a0 … Continue reading