NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Horizons and levels
From: Doug Royer
Date: 2003 Jul 15, 11:11 -0700
From: Doug Royer
Date: 2003 Jul 15, 11:11 -0700
Just want to get a couple of more ideas before I leave.I also want to explain what and why I did it.As for the 3 vs. 4 leveling bolts,maybe 3 are better or at least easier to use to level the reflective surface.It takes 45-90 sec. to level my horizon and can be frustrateing to get it level.It appears that with 3 bolts the leveling will be faster and just as good.The spirit levels I bought are round,the size of a 25 cent coin and have a circle inscribed or printed on the convex plastic lens a little smaller than the size of a dime.They only cost $2.50 each,so they aren't very accurate or I should say they can't give that fine of a reading.However,the little system that was made at least proves to me that this is a viable alternative to liquid levels.I leave it to you guys to hash out the finer details of makeing it more accurate.Once this thing,and the glass one I made, is leveled(relative)I can view all bodies untill they move so much as to need to reposition the horizon.The Sun and Moon were observed.Last week I observed the daytime Moon with the glass horizon I made.Spica,Arcturus,Deneb,Altair,Vega and Antares were observed.Last night I observed Nunki(with the glass horizon and the MS- 733) untill the light from the riseing Moon washed it out.The question is how accurately must it be leveled?I started building a horizon because of frustrations useing a Davis horizon in strong winds during backpacking trips.I use a Davis M-25 plastic sextant on these trips and get an accuracy from the sextant as + - 0.2' at the very best.I'm just pleased as punch getting a fix within 0.5 mile of the gps pos. useing the above set-up.At home useing the above horizons and the MS-733 sextant I get finer results but that is to be expected.My main goal in this was to see if one can get good refections of stars or planets with a glass or plexiglas horizon,be fairly easy to use and be light in wieght.At least to me,these practical experiments prove it is all the above.