"Besides if you were in the air then you had better reception than a ground based receiver."
Ummm, let's review here. ARTCC often listens to multiple freqs., spread out over a large area. You ever hear a controller talking to himself? Or have you ever been able to hear the controller wayyy better than another aircraft? Or have you ever heard an aircraft calling ATC, but ATC couldn't hear the aircraft?
If you haven't, then you don't have very much flight experience (172 flyer). It's plausible that samfu didn't hear the transmission as well as the controller. And sometimes it's just hard to hear transmissions when your iPod is too loud in your headset. Let up, 'cuz it's not the point of the thread anyway.
As for the mystery of celestial nav, Mesaba Saabs have a GPS/FMS that the crews are not supposed to use, but sometimes in life there are scofflaws. ATC knows that some crews can pop the CB back in and navigate w/GPS - we, er, I mean, those crews referred to it as (wink wink) "celestial nav".
If that's not the ticket, then it was the crew asking for the heading they always get for a particular airport. Mesaba only flies to a few airports down there, and Mesaba crews and controllers have the headings from Memphis well memorized. So much so that "How about 220 for Greenville" can become too wordy and boring, and I can see someone saying "How about celestial nav tonight?". ATC just kinda lets you go in a direction for a while until you pick up the signal. It's really advanced navigation down South. This ain't Canada, where they step to you right away if you go 1/32 of a dot off course over the swamps of lower Ontario.
In any event, I don't think a Saab Driver had a sextant pointed at the sky. He'd get his a$$ kicked. "Celestial Nav" was probably just a non-incriminating over-the-air euphemism for direct navigation by whatever means available. It's casual.
Peace
