NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Robert VanderPol II
Date: 2015 Aug 19, 23:05 -0700
Been camping on the California coast this week at MorroBay.
Been shooting the sun evenings (that's when there's a horizon to shoot to if the haze clears out enough) using the sextant my wife got me. Used Kolbe's almanac and HO-211. Each sight is an average of 5-8 readings, 8 when my wife wants to take several too.
Other than the first time when I was off 10nm, I've been getting 2.1-3.3nm errors.
I'm standing on a firm surface which helps, but I don't have a good grasp of height of eye since I'm back about 300-400m from water's edge. I tried thinking of a way to calc that measuring horizon to top of somebody's head standing at water's edge assuming they were 5'9" but couldn't figure a straight forward way. I've just been assuming 20'.
Anyway, results seem decent for the cost.
