NavList:

Thanks for your response. Very helpful. When you say moon sight are hard work, do you mean that moon sights in general or the "local apparent moon" sight specifically? Is the hard work dealing with the HP correction table?  I checked out the air almanac and it gives you an easy moon correction value so you don't have to deal with the HP table. 

Also, when you say that maximum altitude does not occur when the sun or moon are passing your meridian, what kind of error are we  talking about; a minute or two of arc or considerabley more?  Since I'm an armchair navigator, all my sightings so far are from land. Thanks for your time.