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    Re: Home made artificial horizon
    From: Gary LaPook
    Date: 2011 Oct 4, 22:45 -0700
    And also those just learning CN work with the concepts and the math but don't see any actual results. Without being able to visit the sea, and take actual observations it devolves down to just boring math (maths for our English viewers.) So being able to take sights in the backyard, even though the sight taking technique is different, allows the new guy to say, "wow, this stuff really works!"

    As to the idea of buying a professional grade AH for 595 Euros, for the 99.99% of us who will only be using the AH  as a learning tool or for the occasional backyard fun session, it makes no sense to spend that kind of money or to put off making an inexpensive one that can serve these purposes quite well. The 0.01% of us who might actually use an AH for real navigation while crossing the Sahara Desert (Geoffrey Kolbe, you know who you are) then its price might be reasonable.

    gl

    --- On Tue, 10/4/11, Gary LaPook <glapook@pacbell.net> wrote:

    From: Gary LaPook <glapook@pacbell.net>
    Subject: [NavList] Re: Home made artificial horizon
    To: NavList@fer3.com
    Date: Tuesday, October 4, 2011, 3:49 PM

    And expense is important. I am sure that many who have asked about this are just learning CN and are cut off from the sea. No reason to make it so expensive that these new navigators just throw in the towel and go out and buy a GPS.

    gl

    --- On Tue, 10/4/11, Geoffrey Kolbe <geoffreykolbe@compuserve.com> wrote:

    From: Geoffrey Kolbe <geoffreykolbe@compuserve.com>
    Subject: [NavList] Re: Home made artificial horizon
    To: NavList@fer3.com
    Date: Tuesday, October 4, 2011, 10:37 AM

    Robert wrote:

    I can't take it anymore!
     
    Seems like you folks are going to a great deal of hassle and looking in every hidden corner for the perfect levelling mechanism and/or to make an effective artificial horizon. Short of using a pan of motor oil or getting hold of some mercury, the best option is, in my opinion, to just go out and purchase a Freiberger artificial horizon which comes with all you need to obtain pinpoint accuracy (as much as is possible with a sextant).


    No no, you don't understand Robert. There is a satisfaction in the process of spending a great deal of time and effort to build an AH as cheaply as possible using plastic, string and sealing wax. ;-)

    But on the matter of practicality, I have no doubt that you are correct. Could you take the plastic string and sealing wax AH to navigate your sledge to the middle of the Antarctic? Or your camel to the middle of the Sahara desert? Possibly, but people have certainly been there and done that with a Freiberger AH. I took the short cut many years ago and bought one.

    One note on the use of levels. Just because the graduation on the level is only one mil say, (about 3 MOA), does not mean that you are limited to an accuracy of 1 mil in level adjustment. By turning the level end for end for comparison and estimating the bubble position to one tenth of a graduation, it is possible to get an accuracy in level-ness at least an order of magnitude better than the level graduations would suggest.

    Geoffrey Kolbe
       
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