A couple of comments.

While opinions about accuracy vary, no numbers have been posted. Come
Spring, it would be great to see a couple of sailors with RDF's take
them out of hiding and check their accuracy against their GPS.

No RDF is going to provide a position within a few meters except by
accident. but most of us work really hard to avoid needing that kind of
accuracy.

Many portable AM radios (read cheap, garage sale variety) have ferrite
antennas that are often sufficiently directional to be usable for RDF
work. Rotate the whole radio and use with a crude hand-drawn scale. It
might even be fun to use one of these "lower tech" systems. Not quite as
accurate as optical triangulation, but at least as much fun. And then
there's the added bonus of an on-board source of weather, news, "music",
and talk shows!

Good luck!

Chuck

purple_stars wrote:
i know everyone uses gps. enough said.

but i also know that a lot of cruisers (most ? all ? all of the smart
ones ?!) use alternate methods of finding their position and navigating
to both keep their skills current in case of emergency, to double check
the gps equipment, etc, etc. some use celestial navigation, everyone
uses piloting skills, and on and on.

but do you still use RDF ?

if so, could you talk a little about what equipment you keep on board
for it ?

most of the RDF equipment i've seen looks really old!