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Subject: Re: Calculators
From: Bill Murdoch (WSMurdoch@XXX.XXX)
Date: Wed Sep 01 1999 - 23:54:15 EDT
I have had a good time playing with the Texas Instrument calculators. They
are inexpensive, easy to program, and readily available. I have TI-67 Galaxy
that I bought new for UKL 17. The February 1994 copy of Practical Boat Owner
has an article which contains a sun sight reduction program for that
calculator. I also have a TI-81 and wrote a similar program for it. That
program was published in the March 1996 issue of Cruising World. I have
modified the sun sight program for the TI-82 and TI-83. If you wish can send
you a copy. The program contains a 0.1', 200 year solar almanac. Given the
time and date, the sight data, and the DR, it returns the azimuth and
intercept.
I also wrote a much longer nav program for a TI-82 which has almanacs for the
sun, moon, four planets and 92 stars. It has all be bells and whistles -
unknown bodies, mercator and spherical sailings, sun rise and sun set, etc.
I sold copies for a few years of the typed program and of the program on
diskette (the diskette can be loaded on the calculator through a PC).
I learned a lot writing the programs. I had a good time doing it. The TI
calculators use a language much like Basic and can be programed either
through their keypads or through a PC connected to the calculator with a
TI-Graphlink cable. The math is tough, but people did it in the 1800s with
little more than logarithm tables.
Bill Murdoch
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