With a navigation compass determine the position exactly

Anyone traveling by car today relies fully on being navigation device, Now there are young drivers who have trouble finding their way around in foreign territory with the help of road maps or car atlas. If necessary, you can stop on the street and ask a passerby for the right way. But how did the captains manage to steer their ship back to their native port centuries ago? For this they needed the so-called card cutlery, which belonged to the most important equipment of each genuine fur seal.

The card cutlery always included one navigation compass , the price triangle and an investment triangle. In maritime museums you can visit preciously decorated cutlery, which are several hundred years old. But few museum visitors who marvel at the old pieces of jewelery are aware that they still work today with the venerable map cutlery on the Kapitänsbrücke. And that, even though today GPS signals help to determine the exact position at any time of day or night.

The peculiarities of a navigation compass

Most of them know a drawing circle from school lessons. One leg of the compass has a tip at the bottom, which ensures that the compassesnot slip when drawing. The other leg has a holder in which a pencil lead is inserted. With a divider no visible circles can be beat. And the tips of the thighs are relatively dull. This has the advantage that the valuable sea or maps are not damaged. With the aid of the navigation compass, distances between two points on the map can be exactly reduced and transmitted in order to determine the course with the aid of nautical calculations.

Navigation compass for aviation

Originally navigation compass invented for shipping. With the development of the airships and airplanes completely new requirements for the reading of maps and the calculation of routes emerged. In the air, the pilots were traveling much faster and might have to act very fast. So were special navigation compass designed for flying. Externally, these helpful devices differ, for example, under the name Navimat 504 or navigation compass 500 are offered by specialized dealers, clearly from the conventional navigation circles. While the traditional navigation circles at first glance have a certain resemblance to a school circle, the round disc first appears on the Navimat. In this disc two segments are left out, which share the view of the underlying, printed with numbers part. Furthermore, there are two pointed parts that can be twisted around a central point. At this point there is a metal part, which rotatably connects all elements together.

For a layman, it all seems very confusing at first. Aspiring pilots learn during training how they can quickly and effectively calculate the route of the flight using this sophisticated navigational compass. Just like the conventional navigation compass, the two tips are placed on the corresponding points on the map. Based on the designation, the expert pilot can select the appropriate navigation compass. For example, the Navimat 500 is suitable for use on 1. 500,000 scale maps. Navigation compass 504 is also suitable for such cards. Number 4 shows that this navigation compass is suitable for airspeeds up to 400 km / h.

But the Navimat can not only help in determining the course, but also provides the pilot with more information. He can read the distance in km and NM. He also gets the flight time displayed directly. The Navimat is designed so that it can be operated with one hand. This device is used during training and flight preparation.