NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Dip-meter again
From: Alexandre Eremenko
Date: 2012 Apr 10, 08:49 -0400
From: Alexandre Eremenko
Date: 2012 Apr 10, 08:49 -0400
Dear Richard, Unfortunately, no statistical method, including least squares can help with dip. The reason is that dip can deviate from its normal value for relatively long periods. For example, if our much discussed observation with Bill B on lake Michigan is explained by the dip (which a majority on the list seems to believe), this anomalous dip persisted for several hours, and was almost constant. (This is an extreme example of course). What averaging (or least square) helps to eliminate is a SUM of MANY small INDEPENDENT errors. The error of the dip is not a "random" error but a "systematic" one. And the only way to eliminate it is the use of some dip-meter device. However, we know that dip-meters were rarely used. (Western manuals almost never mention the device, Soviet ones do mention, and recommend, and it was a standard equipment, but the same manuals recognize that "people do not use it"). This only shows that navigators did not care about anomalous dip. That high accuracy in celestial navigation was not needed, and that large variations of the dip are probably rare. Alex. On Tue, 10 Apr 2012, Richard B. Langley wrote: > > Warning: academic exercise follows ;-) > > Perhaps if one has sufficient redundant observations and uses least > squares to estimate position, one could include dip as an additional > quantity estimated simultaneously from the (biased) observations. The > same procedure is used to process GPS measurements where one of the > "nuisance" parameters is the offset of the receiver's clock from GPS > System Time, which is generally unknown. > > -- Richard Langley > > On 10-Apr-12, at 1:31 AM, Antoine Couëtte wrote: > >> Still, your observations once again point out that DIP is definitely >> one "weak link" in the accuracy computation chain, since even under >> (quite) good conditions, dip standard deviation was already close to >> 0.15/0.20 arc minute. >> > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- > | Richard B. Langley E-mail: > lang---ca | > | Geodetic Research Laboratory Web: http://www.unb.ca/GGE/ > | > | Dept. of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering Phone: +1 506 > 453-5142 | > | University of New Brunswick Fax: +1 506 > 453-4943 | > | Fredericton, N.B., Canada E3B > 5A3 | > | Fredericton? Where's that? See: http:// > www.fredericton.ca/ | > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > > > : http://fer3.com/arc/m2.aspx?i=118883 > > >