NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Accuracy of sextant observations at sea
From: Jeremy C
Date: 2010 Sep 23, 17:38 EDT
From: Jeremy C
Date: 2010 Sep 23, 17:38 EDT
I don't shoot that way Greg and therefore can't offer any analysis. I
try to shoot all of the stars in HO 249 plus available planets. I plot
them all with the computer which derives my fix. I might think about those
methods if I plotted manually, but I rarely do that as I want the
fix down as quickly as possible and don't want my head buried in the chart
room that long underway.
I actually have little faith in Polaris. The star is dim and the
horizon is rarely good when I observe it. I tend to get better results
from 1st order stars which I observe with the best possible horizon
available. The only real advantage these days is that it is easy to reduce
by table. It is also a favorite of the second mates to shoot
azimuths.
Jeremy
In a message dated 9/23/2010 3:48:14 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
gregrudzinski@yahoo.com writes:
Jeremy,
Regarding pin wheels. I am wondering if you have noticed a fix accuracy advantage to four star box fixes (azimuth differing by 90�) over a three star triangular fixes (azimuth differing by 120�)? Do you weigh the Polaris LOP more on a round of stars ? May be Byron has an opinion on this.
Greg Rudzinski
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