NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Plastic sextants. was: GPS shortcomings.
From: Carl Herzog
Date: 2005 Jun 9, 16:26 -0400
From: Carl Herzog
Date: 2005 Jun 9, 16:26 -0400
George Huxtable wrote: >I'm rather surprised that John Kabel experienced such large errors, when >using his Astra from a beach (about 50 % within 3 miles). Was this >shot-to-shot scatter? How repeatable was a series of repeated shots at >close intervals? It could be explained by days of anomalous dip, but a 50% >frequency seems absurdly high. Does John have an explanation? > I'm curious too. Results like that do not reflect the inherent capability of the sextants. I've never had results that bad with either a plastic Davis or a metal Astra underway on any size vessel. I've never tried shooting anything from the shore, so I don't know what other factors may confound accuracy there, but it seems like something else is wrong in this case. Carl
