Rapid Response Search

Now this is the sort of thing to have a grown navigator chew his pencil. It is the diagram used to create a search area when looking for things missing in the water (divers, crewmen etc). It's called a rapid response search and enables one to take a last known position, compensate for environmental factors and elapsed time, and come up with a reasonably accurate area within which the casualty is likely to be. And the thing is it works very well. In reality of course it is normally the Coastguards sat in their ops room who do the sums then pass the co-ordinates of the search area to us. However, we need to know how to do it and be well practised at doing it.

So I am away now for my summer holidays in Stockholm. Wing-Co is taking over the hot seat for a week and will be here daily to entertain you. I trust he won't let us down!