NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Star Finder Urgent Re-Design
From: Zvi Doron
Date: 2005 Apr 17, 21:14 +0100
From: Zvi Doron
Date: 2005 Apr 17, 21:14 +0100
Just received a 2102-D star finder I bought on eBay and finding it hard to understand why it was designed to be so difficult to use. The point that the celestial sphere is depicted from the outside, rather than from within (the way it appears when looking at it from the surface of the earth) was already mentioned on this forum before. It is extremely confusing. The RAF standard Flower Planisphere was dsigned the 'right' way. If anybody knows of any reason why Mr. Rude decided on this anti-intuitive arrangement I would love to hear it. The other issues concern the blue graticule transparent disks. First, having a miror image set of azimuths and declinations for north and south make these very difficult to read quickly. The eye keeps andering around looking for the right numbers. A simple two colour solution, similar to the Astro Compass, would have solved this for a small additional price. More annoying is the fact that whilst star names are written circularly around the pole, the azimuths are all oriented so as to be read from one direction (south). You have to keep turning the whole thing to read both the star name and its azimuth if they are above the line of your zenith (looking from south). I have added two paper disks that when placed over the pin and aligned properly give me a quick indication of GHA Aries, not accurate enough for sight reduction but good enough for setting the instrument without an almanac and identifying unknown stars showing through gaps in cloud cover. They make the star finder a much more capable product. I am tempted to start manufacturing an improved version of the Star Finder - (2102 E?) if not for making any money at least for making it a much more usable product... I know it has been around in its present form for many years, and as we know old navigation habits die hard. So did longitude by chronmeter and various other needles and confusing conversions between various time systems and star location arrangements. Time to move on.