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Instrumentation
This trip has made me very conscious of instrumentation. The declination here is 24 degrees. The compass built into the car is constantly off by a sub-cardinal.
The last time I caught a sunset, outside of Whitehorse, it was in the northwest1. So using the sun for a guide would be confusing.
But I have GPS. And it rocks. I only had it for a bit before the trip, in a city that I knew pretty well, so this has been the first real use of it. I'm in love.
I've always had a pretty good sense of direction, but not perfect. And I'm pretty good at reading maps, but that can be hard to do while driving. Combine the two with GPS on my PDA (with maps for every road along the way) and I'm almost infallible. To be able to drive into completely unknown city and easily navigate is almost creepy. And if I can't find it on the map, I can have the PDA work out a route for me. Even just being able to see what streets go through, to see how to get around a park or a freeway or something is amazingly useful. All this and it's the only practical application of general relativity that I know of. Just too cool.
1: At 303 degrees, to be precise. How did I know? I pointed the car at it and used the GPS bearing.
The last time I caught a sunset, outside of Whitehorse, it was in the northwest1. So using the sun for a guide would be confusing.
But I have GPS. And it rocks. I only had it for a bit before the trip, in a city that I knew pretty well, so this has been the first real use of it. I'm in love.
I've always had a pretty good sense of direction, but not perfect. And I'm pretty good at reading maps, but that can be hard to do while driving. Combine the two with GPS on my PDA (with maps for every road along the way) and I'm almost infallible. To be able to drive into completely unknown city and easily navigate is almost creepy. And if I can't find it on the map, I can have the PDA work out a route for me. Even just being able to see what streets go through, to see how to get around a park or a freeway or something is amazingly useful. All this and it's the only practical application of general relativity that I know of. Just too cool.
1: At 303 degrees, to be precise. How did I know? I pointed the car at it and used the GPS bearing.
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It boggles my mind. I love the idea, but there's no reason to be so completely wreckless these days, I guess.
The Canadian equivalent to the AIM, the Airman's Information Publication (I think) has loads and loads of regulations for navigating the ZMU, the Zone of Magnetic Uncertainty. And nearly every one is taken care of by having a GPS (well, two, probably) in your plane.
Driving is less scary because, well, there's a road. But still, that's pretty cool. Do the tiny little towns have their streets marked on the maps in your PDA, too? That might be almost kind of depressing. I like uncharted territory. :)
Go Team Go.