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I'm looking for the ultimate nautical calculator.
(celestial navigation / great-circle & rumb-line navigation / tide calculation, etc)
Any suggestions?

I collect old navigational calculators and am very impressed with Tamaya's. Their latest, the NC-2000, sure looks like it does just about everything one could want along the lines of what you're looking for. They also seem to do a good job documenting how to use their machines. It's very expensive, list price is $1200, but you didn't say that that was a concern.

If you don't want to pay 1200 bucks, pick up a used 15C or a 42S and program it yourself for your special needs. That's what I did for my amateur astronomy requirements. I got a 15 and a 42 packed with stuff.

tm

If you are going to program it yourself why not picking up a 48. It's cheaper than the 15C and 42C and is easier to find. May be someone already wrote programs for that.

I'll second chan tran on this-

while the 42 can certianly do most of what you need (likely all with the 32k upgrade), and the 41 certainly can, the 48g/gx will be cheap, easy to backup (glenn does it through the IR link direct from calc to calc)- and you cna still get all the environmentally sealed usable packaging to use it in adverse conditions. Last I checked, the surveying specific providers still had a ton of that stuff.

there are/were also some airplane navigation pacs made, not sure if there were and nautical ones, but I know there are some astronomy apps floating around.

the 48 series takes a lot of flack here, but you won't find a better general purpose solution with 2 spares for under $400, AFAIK

Pretending it is still the 1980's, anyone remember if the Navigation Pac was any good for the 41C series?

I know a guy who sailed around the world with one in a CX. Also a guy who sailed to New Zealand and back.

Complete Nav Pac's go for around $90-100 on eBay. It's an 8kB module whose contents won't fit into the RAM+X-mem on a 41C/V/X (and even if it did, the numbered registers used by the routines wouldn't be available). Worth getting if you need the specialized functionality, but I doubt that it's the best handheld navigational calculation package out there.

For HP41 a special plug in module for nautic navigation exist, called "Bobby Schenk Module" or "Yacht Computer Navi Module". This advanced 8 KByte module was programmed in Germany by Bobby Schenk and Dr. Peter Förster. The module includes world wide navigation, route planning and Time Module features.

Best wishes from Germany - Christoph Klug