NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Vertical Angle Measurement Errors
From: Marcel Tschudin
Date: 2013 Apr 2, 12:47 +0300
From: Marcel Tschudin
Date: 2013 Apr 2, 12:47 +0300
Bill Morris, you wrote:
Given the atmospheric variation and the effects of wave and swell I think it would be optimistic to expect vertical readings to have accuracies better than 10 to 20 seconds. Nothing much is going to alter that apart from taking myriads of readings that give results bearing no relationship to practical observations at sea. The Soviet Navy presumably came to the same conclusion and provided dip meters.
Myriads of *documented* measurements would at least allow to find out how the dip (or more specific the terrestrial refraction) changes under different atmospheric conditions and possably also how its estimation could be improved.
Marcel
