NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
(no subject)
From: Greg B
Date: 2006 Feb 28, 12:44 -0500
From: Greg B
Date: 2006 Feb 28, 12:44 -0500
Good Day to the List!
My name is Greg & I have an interest in historical navigation. In addition
to enjoying
sailing I belong to a local Rev. War group, where I have the persona of a
surveyor.
Since surveyors also had to know how to determine lat/Lon I have started to
teach myself the Basics. At this point I have hit a small snag. It should
be pretty straight forward to shoot Polaris But living inland I need to use
a artificial horizon a "well leveled mirror" as the books put it, and I
can't seem to come any closer than 3-4 NM. The sextant I am using is a
MAC(" Measure All Co. " - Japan ) that I bought off of a retiring blue
water boater on eBay; it seems to be in quite good condition, and I think
$250 was a fair price. All I can think is that there is something wrong
with the way I am setting it up. May I ask for some guidance please:
Why does the star look "smeared" through the mirror & 'OK' during
a normal horizon sight?
How optically flat does the mirror really need to be?
How close (or far away) from the mirror should you need to be?
Is a good quality carpenter?s level accurate enough?
Many thanks to the list in advance!
-Greg
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