NavList:

Hi Greg, you wrote:
"I thank you both; please don't argue on my account."

You're welcome. Certainly, there's no argument "on your account". Just to be clear, the replies you received from Brad Morris on this topic were simply off-target. He himself said that he didn't understand your (clarified, and I thought "very clear") question, so we can just leave it at that. His replies were not related to your question.

You wrote:
"I am planning to experiment with the methods of Lewis and Clark when I go to the Muddy Run Rendezvous & Black Powder shoot. I usually hold a little knowledge exchange / get together for others who portray navigators and / or surveyors. It is a lot of fun for me to see other peoples work, and show what I have learned.
I see a lot of interpretations from guys with museum quality replicas ($$$$$) to guys who buy the "authentic antique sextant" from India off of ebay and only talk in generalities because they can't do a actual sight with it. I take the middle ground; I bring my homemade period looking octant, and a modern metal sextant."

How many other surveyor/navigator participants are there at these gatherings? How do you meet up with them? Is there a "special interests" bulletin board of some sort? Or do you just walk about the encampment looking for people with octants and such?

And you wrote:
"We all dress in period cloths, and we all demo period math - visitors day is always 'fun' (?) showing bemused visitors just what you had to go through to find your location (and then they pull out there smart phone with GPS and say something like...I like this better)."

When I shoot sights at locations with a lot of foot traffic, I often get questions. Over the years I've developed a series of explanations ranging from very short and "pithy" to rather longer and technical. I try to gauge folks' reactions to a quicky explanation and then ramp up if they seem interested. But it's a tough call, of course. And then if you have multiple passers by at the same time, you have to go for a the scatter shot explanation and hope for the best!

And:
"Any way I expect I will be doing star meridian sights because the sun's Hc will be at 65 deg and my sextant only measures to 120 deg."

Right. So Noon Sun is out, but of course you can do other Sun sights in the morning and afternoon and explain how they relate to the Sun's position on the globe. Maybe? Explaining that "zenith distance tells equals distance from that place where the Sun is straight up" is usually feasible. And then most everyone can follow the math that gets from the doubled altitude (off the A.H.) to the z.d. That's usually enough math to make people feel comfortable that they have actually understood something. And then for those who want more, it's not too hard to do "latitude=zd+dec" for meridian sights. And that's real navigation.

And you concluded:
"I also have to make time for the highland games ( I consider it a good meet if I don't drop the caber on myself!)"

Yeah. Don't do that! :)

-FER

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