NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Sextant accuracy and possibility of future improvement
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2016 Jul 21, 18:26 +0000
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2016 Jul 21, 18:26 +0000
Excellent idea. Add that to my later post of suggestions on how to use electronics to truly improve sextant functionality. Only issue would be on exactly how to do the averaging. Do I blindly accept all shots, or do I ignore those who are wildly off (what statisticians sometimes refer to "shoot the dissidents")?
From: Philip Lange <NoReply_PhilipLange@fer3.com>
To: luabel@ymail.com
Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2016 11:03 AM
Subject: [NavList] Re: Sextant accuracy and possibility of future improvement
I would posit that the same problem exists while attempting to hold the horizon stable while bringing down the celestial object using a regular sextant. The addition of an electronic averager would iron out the bumps. And no horizon needed!
On 07/21/2016 01:43 PM, Lu Abel wrote:
If you want an example of how hard it is to achieve exact levelness, I suggest downloading the free smart phone app "Theodolite" Using just the basic capabilities of a smartphone it gives an indication of how level you are holding your phone in both the fore and aft and sideways directions. And how those readings bounce around as you attempt to do your best possible job of holding your phone steady.
