NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Greg Rudzinski
Date: 2015 Jun 24, 10:22 -0700
Andres,
Hmmm? I've owned two Vion Mini Morin 2000s with never a problem other than dropping the first one from 9 ft and breaking the small prism on top. That's why I now have a second one that I like very much. Check for magnetic influence from your sunglasses, wristwatch, metal buttons/zippers, rings. Don't use a flash light at night to light up the compass card. Many flashlights will deviate the hand compass.
Greg Rudzinski
P.S. You didn't set it on top of a large stereo speaker all winter did you ? Try tapping the hand compass on the bottom with your knuckles a few times. This may shake out some of the unwanted permanent magnetism if that's the problem. Watch out for hand held VHFs in the binnacle beer holder messing with the steering compass. I missed my mark because of this once.
From: Andrés Ruiz
Date: 2015 Jun 24, 08:35 +0200Agree with you Sam, with PDFs is no so user friendly, but it works for consultation.I have the book by our college in NavList Bill Morris http://sextantbook.com/, I bought the kindle version and as is a native format for kindle, is great top read and to see the illustrations. You can also use the desktop app to read it on a bigger screen,
I usually read when I go to bed, when traveling, and when sailing. In my last route with my sloop, i forgot my kindle, the wind was only force 2, a fantastic situation to enjoy at sea with a goog reading. And What did I do? I took my Davis plastic sextant, the only one I have always aboard, and practiced the DR Doniol-Hanno method. With a cold beer and the pencil, it was a pleasure, only one LoP by Sun altitude. Then I took my bearing compass and by tree bearings I obtained a fix by two horizontal angles. The fix was plotted on the nautical chart, and for my surprise the error between the coastal fix and the MSH LoP was unacceptable.
I turned on the GPS, and wrote the position.
At home I checked my calculations, the haversine SR was OK, and the cross error between the LoP and the GPS position was less than 2.5 nm.
For bearings,I use a Hockey Puck, vion mini morin 2000, the problem was that now the error of the Hockey Puck is 12.5º, (tested on land with three different targets. from different places). Before this it was 1/2º accurate, it passed all the winter in the same place, but i think there are no magnetic fields ???
experiences about your Hockey Puck accuracy?
I want to hear about this issue, better in another subject
