NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Artificial Horizons
From: Carl Herzog
Date: 2004 Feb 5, 11:53 -0500
From: Carl Herzog
Date: 2004 Feb 5, 11:53 -0500
I have the small plastic artificial horizon
that Davis used to produce, and used it with motor oil. Though the oil had to be
kept in a different jug, I didn't need much and the size of the Davis made it
easy to transport. I've only used it a few times; once taking a series
of shots along a cove I was trying to chart.
My only other experience with artificial
horizons was in a dead calm fog bank off Nova Scotia. The sun broke through, but
the horizon was nowhere to be seen. I quickly "borrowed" a baking pan from
the galley and some motor oil from the engine room to get our only sun line
in three days . It worked quite well, though neither the cook or the
engineer seemed very impressed, as I recall!
(By the way, this was on a sail training
voyage in which we had started the week attempting to stick to celestial for
education purposes. It should be noted that despite the visibility, our DR, GPS
and radar helped maintain safety margins.)
Carl Herzog
