NavList:

Gary, you wrote:
"Since we have been discussing the HO 2101-D star finder, has anybody had
any experience with the Kotlaric star finder shown in Bowditch, attached?"

You mean the 2102-D? :-)

I haven't seen an actual Kotlaric star finder, but it seems simple enough. The article in Bowditch (1984) claims that it's more accurate than the 2102-D. I don't buy that. You have to interpolate along the little bands by each star to get to the right LHA for the case in hand. That's because the Kotlaric reverses the geometry of the Rude star finder and uses a fixed latitude scale with variable star bases. But it seems to me that you can get just the same accuracy by going that extra step with the Rude star finder. If you're at 35d latitude and you have latitude overlays for 30 and 40 degrees, then you use those two overlays separately and then average. One nice thing about the Kotlaric star maps is that they include many of the fainter naked eye stars, much like a common planisphere.

It would be easy to reproduce the Kotlaric star finder system. I can't think of any reason to do so.

-FER

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