Re: "two main reasons why the Royal Navy no longer uses [paper charts]"
My father did his navigation exams in the early 80s. He took bearing with the sextant and was then stuck in the cabin of a yacht, windows blacked out and given charts, tide tables, log and a compass and told to get on with it and tell the captain headings. He had to navigate to a destination.
A few months later, he was sailing with friends out to Bara from Oban, when they hit a fog bank.Charts, tide tables and a compass... When they arrived at Barra, the marker boy was about 10 yards to the left of where they thought it should be.
Whilst I appreciate that the Navy doesn't have time to do it "the old fashioned way", surely learning the basics, in case they lose "everything", is still a good way to start the training.
It is like maths. At school, we had to learn how to do it the hard way - writing it out long hand, log books etc. and once we could do that, we were shown how to use a calculator. These days, when shopping, I'm still adding things up in my head as I go around plundering the shelves and I know whether the till is asking for the right money or not.
If you can't do it yourself, how do you know the technology is giving you the right answers?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
