NavList:

Dear Brad, dear Paul,

As an engineer myself I completely agree with you on the matter of accuracy.

All the sextants I have pass the "general reasonability check" - what ever I calculate as a star-to-star distance from an Almanac I see on an arc and drum. The actual practice of the "armchair CN" puts me to within ~1nm of my GPS location, so it obviously "works".

My wanting to get to those cryptic tables is in line with my wanting to master lunars - to get to the very edge of accuracy possible with the equipment at hands. As an engineer I cannot tolerate that I do not understand the "under the hood" workings of someone else's device - in this case - the Annex#2 correction tables. Mr Hirose has kindly calculated the example values - thank you Paul! - I can't sleep well unless I get the understanding of it all.

:)

BTW, the poles for so called "Scandinavian walking" are very helpful as a sextant support. The only better results are possible if the sextant is mounted on a tripod. A long enough 3-piece telescopic Scandinavian walking pole is more compact and lighter that any tripod. (One may also walk with it! :) )

After all it is only a hobby... :)

Warm regards,
Tony

60°N 30°E