NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Lunars.
From: Steven Wepster
Date: 2001 Jul 13, 8:30 AM
From: Steven Wepster
Date: 2001 Jul 13, 8:30 AM
Dear Herbert, Thanks for poiinting this out to me. I'll go after an 1909 Bowditch... _Steven. > Dear Nigel and Steven, > > It find it hard to understand how the concept of "cheating" would apply to taking > a lunar distance. LDs were and are not a sport, but rather a method of solving a > technical problem with any tool available. Presetting the sextant was not only > permissible, but in fact common practice. Not only did it save the trouble of > moving the star across the sky diagonally, but it also helped with the body's > identification. See, for instance, what Bowditch, American Practical Navigator, > 1909 (or similar editions), Appendix V has to say on the subject. > > The LD was not a method to find time and longitude out of the blue. It rather > provided a corrective to an erroneous chronometer. By checking the latter > regularly against LDs, time was always known to a reasonably good degree of > accuracy.