NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Hewitt Schlereth
Date: 2010 Sep 18, 13:04 -0400
Well, welcome to a quaint old art. It's always heartening to see a new mind engaged by it.
I'm curious about the sextant you're using and what sight reduction method.
Also be interested to know what general (landlocked) part of the world you are in. One of the good things about celestial is you can learn all you need to know without going to sea - just ask Lewis or Clark.
Hewitt
For reasons unknown, during the last few years I became interested in celestial navigation, strange as that might be, for I'm not a boating/sailing type.
In any case, getting "good" with a marine sextant requires practice with the thing, an activity that living inland makes difficult. A while back, looking though a Celestaire catalog, I came on the Davis Artificial Horizon, and purchased one. They also offer a Practice Bubble Horizon that mounts on the sextant. I have yet to obtain success with the latter, though he former works, assuming that one reads the brief instruction sheet that comes with it.
Working against a Known Position (GPS coordinates), my calculated fix (estimated position) often falls well within 5 NM of KP. Granted, I'm not on a small boat, bouncing all over the place, however granting that, one can get about as much practice as they can stand with the Davis Artificial Horizon.
As to time keepers, a while back I purchased a Casio G-Shock Atomic Watch, via Amazon. Paid about $50.00 for it. The thing is, and remains dead nuts on, as far as I can determine via checking with Official Time via computer, time data coming from The Naval Observatory.
For the sake of clarity, aside from being, in a small way, a customer, I have no connection with either Celestaire or Casio.
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