blog: scout tricks exposed

[nikos]

here's the comment area for today's blog post found at
https://www.zabkat.com/blog/watch-compa ... lained.htm

[dunno]

Analogue watch...

Create a Analogue watch app for mobile phones and you'll have a winner, just don't tell them that their phone has GPS.

[nikos]

there are even compass apps for phones without compass, the game is rigged for the young ones
no brains required

[dunno]

What's scary is that youngsters don't verify, they trust implicitly.

In my profession, I was amazed at how many new pilots would simply engage the auto pilot or any automatic system without verifying that the subsystem is doing what it was programmed to do according to parameters, It was always a case of Engage and forget, assume it would work as advertised, no questioning, they had to be taught to think "is it doing what its supposed to do"...

As for raw data flying, the less said about that the better.

[johngalt]

This actually is the basis of how a sundial works as well, the shadow of the gnomon can only display 180 degrees of the circular 360 degrees of the earth.

A decent article about sundials: https://sciencing.com/a-sundial-work-4564064.html

For example, someone building a sundial at latitude 40° in Boulder, Colorado, in the United States, would aim the gnomon 40 degrees above the middle of the northern horizon, just under halfway to the point directly overhead (the zenith). As you may know, since there are 360 degrees in a circle, a half-circle like the sky covers 180 degrees; this means the angular distance from any horizon to the zenith is half of this, or 90 degrees.

It's rather funny how the beginning of the article is not too different from your blog, nikos. What if our devices were no longer usable?

As for kids relying on technology - heck, we, as humans, have been doing the exact same thing for multitude of millennia. The folks that make it to elder status in age are the ones who (usually) learn from their mistakes in trusting the technology over verifying it.

[nikos]

so many things to learn, so little time
believe it or not I'd never heard of this "watch compass trick" till last week

[johngalt]

I've never heard of it either, until your blog post. But as I started reading it, I realized that I'd run into something similar before - how to make a homemade sundial ;D