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Dear George,

> If you would kindly
> copy it and resend, I would be grateful.

It takes a lot of effort to find some old message in
the Nav-L archiv. Your current message is almost OK
with its 72 character lines.
You will make my replying to
you even easier if you reduce them to 50 characters:-)
The shorter lines are easier to read, do you agree?

That's why the lines in my messages are always so short.
(The editor I use does not insert them automatically,
I just type
a line break
wherever I want).

Back to the Nav business.


> Other adjustments, for side error and
> index error, will be made to the horizon mirror.

I thought this is a standard arrangement, have you seen sextants
where the side error is adjusted on the index glass??

> The mirror should be held at an
> angle in the view of the telescope, close in front of the objective,
> with some arrangement of cardboard and sticky-tape.

Of course, I can experiment with my spare mirror this way.
But if the mirror is bent as a result of the way it is attached
to the sextant, the only way to find this out is to fix the
whole sextant, without detaching the mirror.

> the sort of skill that was once expected
> of physics research students, in the days before they devoted themselves
> entirely to computer screens. That's an under-appreciated gift, and I
> bet you have it.

I am afraid I don't. Actually this is one of the reasons
why I became a mathematician rather than a physicist or an engineer.
I was equally attracted to physics and mathematics, but knew that
I am not a handy man to make ingenious experiments,
so I thought it is better to choose math.

Alex.

   

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