NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Navy MK 5 Octant Using Natural Horizon
From: Alexandre Eremenko
Date: 2012 May 1, 18:17 -0400
From: Alexandre Eremenko
Date: 2012 May 1, 18:17 -0400
Greg, > The results are not extraordinary in that any data set from > any sextant can be made to look good by adjusting the index error. Does your octant have adjustment for the index error? I understand that with ordinary sextants the index error can be adjusted. The problem is to determine it with 0.2 accuracy:-) Besides, we know that even good ordinary sextants can have substantial arc error, etc. Which is again hard to find. Now, the 0.2 average error in your 30 observations shows that the index error as you determined it is very close to the truth. Did you adjust it? I supose not, (otherwise why would you adjust it to 6') > is why I look at the maximum and minimum values of a set > of data to judge a sextant and or navigator performance. The maximum spread of 2.7 shows that the errors are all less then 1.2 or 1.4 in magnitude. But you did not answer my question: how did you choose the preset values? And why they were such as we see them. Alex. > Keep an eye open on ebay for U.S. Navy MK 5's which can be > had for under $100 but use caution on the buy. I don't know how can one "use caution" with a sextant on e-bay, especially with an air sextant:-) You can only take the risk. 99.9% of e-bay sellers would say in advance that they know nothing about sextants, which is true, about half of them photograph a normal sextant upside down. Once I asked a seller what is the radius of the arc, and his reply was that he is not sure what the "radius" is :-) So I do not expect them to answer such questions as whether the bubble is present or not. I simply thought that $100 or $140 that I payed is a sum I can afford to risk:-) I was lucky: the only thing which did not work was the light, and I found how to fix it and fixed in few hours. But repairing a bubble is definitely beyond my possibilities:-( Alex. P.S. By the way, you promote this sextant for use at sea. Is it possible to detach the averaging mechanism? It is a general agreement that the averager is of no use at sea, while it takes most weight and bulk. Ken told me that he just sawed it off from his MkIX A, thus converting them to MkIX.