Navigation - Topics

How does GPS know exactly where you are? Dead reckoning in a tunnel: why the blue dot drifts and then snaps back The week the GPS rollover bug made old receivers think it was 1999 Why are road signs in Britain and the United States so different when the rules are much the same? How does an airplane know where it is when there is nothing on the ground to look at? When the GPS signal is jammed and the ship has to fall back on the sextant Why does your satnav route you through a village that hates through traffic? Wrong turn into a truck ban zone: how good is the routing data behind your app? Why does the shortest route on the map feel longer than the fastest one? How do you navigate an airport you have never seen in a language you cannot read? Squat effect: why does a ship in a narrow channel get sucked toward the bank? Do taxi drivers still know the city better than the navigation app? What the stars were used for before there were charts Bow thrusters and tugs: how does a 400-metre ship dock without touching anything? What a river pilot knows that no chart records How do ships navigate when GPS is jammed and why does it happen so often now? How does a thirty-tonne anchor hold a ship in a gale? How did Pacific navigators cross the ocean without instruments? How accurate is GPS for tolling and what happens when it drops out?