Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!godot!harvard!seismo!brl-tgr!ron From: ron@brl-tgr.ARPA (Ron Natalie) Newsgroups: net.aviation Subject: Re: aviation calculators Message-ID: <6436@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Fri, 7-Dec-84 00:06:49 EST Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.6436 Posted: Fri Dec 7 00:06:49 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 8-Dec-84 07:08:44 EST References: <128@anwar.UUCP> <208@terak.UUCP> Distribution: net.general Organization: Ballistic Research Lab Lines: 12 Yes, actually, my first instructor was a physics prof at Johns Hopkins and the class was all university students. He pointed out that there was no point in buying a computer since we all had scientific calculators and we could do all that wind stuff with vector math (remember the law of cosines). I used a pocket TRASH-80 (which is unbearably slow) for a while. In addition to being able to do rudimentary math, part of its programming was to use the spherical law of cosines to tell me how far apart two points were given their latitude and longitude. Handy for getting rough distances between fields without unfolding a bunch of charts. Just look up the coordinates in the facilities directory. -Ron