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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
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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