NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Measuring time in small boat CN: what devices do you recommend?
From: Jim Thompson
Date: 2004 Jan 7, 06:52 -0400
From: Jim Thompson
Date: 2004 Jan 7, 06:52 -0400
Most of us beginner CN students are using digital watches to time our sights. My Timex Expedition is drifting about 1 second fast every 2 weeks. I think I can time a sight to one second precision with it in good conditions. What devices would this list recommend that we obtain if we get serious about small-boat CN? Digital watches are hard to read in winter air: the LCD screen fades in the cold, and I wonder if the battery-powered electric circuitry might actually slow down the timing function. And by the time I shine a light on the face to read the time, precious seconds can drift by. A lot of the wrist- and stop-watches that I've looked at in stores would be hard to read to the nearest second, especially out in real weather at twilight. 1. For timing sights on deck: a stopwatch with split-seconds? Digital wrist-watch? High quality quartz crystal wrist-watch? 2. For a chronometer to keep safe below decks as a reference for the comparing watch: The GPS? A clock with built-in radio tick sensing? An atomic clock? An old-fashioned wind-up quartz crystal chronometer in a box? Suggestions about types of devices would be helpful, but actual model names/numbers would be even better. Jim Thompson jim2@jimthompson.net http://jimthompson.net/boating/Celestial_Navigation.htm Outgoing mail scanned by Norton Antivirus -----------------------------------------
