NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2012 Apr 15, 19:25 -0700
Arc error is NO PROBLEM ...so long as it has been properly assessed. I would much prefer a sextant with a trustworthy calibration table with good intervals (like the ten degree intervals in your sextant's table) and errors up to a couple of minutes of arc over a sextant that has simply been labeled "good enough for normal practice" or whatever euphemism they use. After all, on any sextant sight you're going to correct for index error. So make a table that combines the arc correction with the index correction, and then you have the same amount of work to do every time. It might be a little "disappointing" in some fashion that's hard to quantify, but it does no harm at all.
-FER
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