At 03:04 PM 11/12/98 -0500, you wrote:
>
>Aside from the celestial definitions, as I remember from my Army days with
>artillery and missiles, declination was the angle in radians from a fixed
>reference point to the target.
>
Jon...you're right...but the theme is compass deviation and compass
variation all from true north, and the word "declination" has incorrectly
been used in lieu of both deviation ( compass error) and variation ( the
angular difference between magnetic north and true north).
The problem is to find true north for antenna and rotator alignment
purposes. A number of solutions have been suggested, eg my own of Polaris
and someone else's great shadow at noon method. Both will work. But then
someone wondered what could someone do on a cloudy night , ie no shadows
and no Polaris, with a Boy Scout compass, and my answer is use the damn Boy
Scout compass. Most beams and quads couldn't care less.
73 Stu
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