NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Star Finder Urgent Re-Design
From: Joel Jacobs
Date: 2005 Apr 18, 18:24 +0000
From: Joel Jacobs
Date: 2005 Apr 18, 18:24 +0000
Zvi,
One of the list members has a Nautech Celestial Azimuth Star Finder as was originally used to set the guidence system of an early stage rocket. It had all kinds of advanced features that made it ideal for CelNav and we sold a bunch of them for that purpose.
I forgot who wrote me about having it some time back, but maybe he will read this and comment.
Joel Jacobs
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-------------- Original message from Zvi Doron <zvidoron@BTINTERNET.COM>: --------------
> Just received a 2102-D star finder I bought on eBay and finding it hard to
> understand why it was designed to be so difficult to use.
> The point that the celestial sphere is depicted from the outside, rather
> than from within (the way it appears when looking at it from the surface of
> the earth) was already mentioned on this forum before. It is extremely
> confusing. The RAF standard Flower Planisphere was dsigned the 'right' way.
> If anybody knows of any reason why Mr. Rude decided on this anti-intuitive
> arrangement I would love to hear it.
> The other issues concern the blue graticule transparent disks.
> First, having a miror image set of azimuths and declinations for north and
> south make these ver! y difficult to read quickly. The eye keeps andering
> around looking for the right numbers. A simple two colour solution, similar
> to the Astro Compass, would have solved this for a small additional price.
> More annoying is the fact that whilst star names are written circularly
> around the pole, the azimuths are all oriented so as to be read from one
> direction (south). You have to keep turning the whole thing to read both the
> star name and its azimuth if they are above the line of your zenith (looking
> from south).
> I have added two paper disks that when placed over the pin and aligned
> properly give me a quick indication of GHA Aries, not accurate enough for
> sight reduction but good enough for setting the instrument without an
> almanac and identifying unknown stars showing through gaps in cloud cover.
> They make the star finder a much more capable product. I am tempted to start!
> manufacturing an improved version of the Star Finder - (2102 E?) if not for
> making any money at least for making it a much more usable product...
> I know it has been around in its present form for many years, and as we know
> old navigation habits die hard. So did longitude by chronmeter and various
> other needles and confusing conversions between various time systems and
> star location arrangements. Time to move on.