setting your orientation azm

Not sure I fully understand your problem. Don't think you mean drift?
7° is a huge difference.
If you do mean drift, as in set back sight then check later drift can come through sloppy legs, tribrach not tight on legs, legs moving slightly but not enough to throw it off level.
I assume your instrument has compensators for vertical and horizontal?
I once accidentally turned mine Off!
Sent it away due to sloppy results. Quite embarrassing.

Is it Robotic? Not much help, others will chip in but a bit more info may help.
For me may just be language barrier?

7 degrees seems mighty dam high.
7 seconds would be more acceptable and maybe ok.

Are these long setups?
Next to a busy rail line?
The one time I was setup by a rail track, I had to re-setup and get a new bs check because it was knocking the gun completely out of level. It was frozen ground and thawed as the day went to I'm sure that just made it worse every time a train came by.

Are you referring to a compass azimuth? If so, it sounds like a declination problem. Have him read the other vertical line in the Sunnto.;-)

I was just referring to setting our initial bs azm Sta 2 to sta 1 to be orientated to magnetic north. For ex. Inst. tech reads 309 deg through the compass and i read 302 deg
I had a third person check and there reading 305 deg. Our azm compass only has 1 fixed vert. line so this isn't a declination thing. I just was surprised to see that there was that much of a difference between one persons observation to another.
I checked again on our next trav. and had about the same results and there is no metal near by so this isn't a magnetic pull thing.:-S
We are all using the same method both eyes open bring the compass into view so as to see the foreground and the azm #.

I could see being a deg or 2 off but i thought 7 or 9 deg was a bit much.

If i remember right i think I remember reading something in the manual for the compass about some people can have some kind of eye disorder that can have some affect and there is a different procedure for using the compass.

Thanks for your responses

I am not seasoned enough to say what it is but I think I can say that is not an eye disorder.

It is probably poor procedure by the user but may be a compass which is defective in some way.

Compass needs to be level etc. It seems like you could rule out a seven degree swing with a line stuck on a level surface and setting the compass on the line, cranking the az, lifting it off, put it back, and read the difference.

There are some sophisticated compass users here, my skills are pretty rudimentary, I have worked with some dudes who did forest road layout with compass and hand level back in the day and they could do some real work with a silva ranger.

Question: Are you standing over point 2 or say 15 feet behind it looking over the gun at the backsite?

If you are over the point I can see a 7 degree spread over 3 readings by 3 different people. However if you are 15 feet back looking thru the two points I would expect a little less of a variance.

Did everyone involved take all the magnetic items off their body? If you have a magnetic locator, run it over each person. Somebody's glasses frames, for instance, could pull the compass. Or they still have their cell phone, a pocket knife, or a huge belt buckle.

I recall someone's story of trying to repeat compass traverse from the 1800's and not being able to get anything close. They saw a picture of the old surveyor and noticed that he carried a pistol on his belt. They got a similar pistol and suddenly were able to get much closer to his traverses.

If you have laths on both traverse points you can rest your compass on the lath and use that to steady up. It's considerably harder to stand and get an accurate reading.
When you're refocusing your eyes between lining up the two points and then reading the scale, you are losing the initial alignment.

You can even balance the compass on a square or flat lath with a steady hand and a little practice, provided you haven't beaten the piss out of the lath when you drove it.

Ok guys thanks for the feedback. I'll definitely have to look more into this.

The compass I'm using is SUUNTO KB-14/360R G

FYI this is what i was ref to about the eye disorder... took me forever to find a pdf of the manual online. http://www.trekkinn.com/outdoor-mountain/suunto-kb-14-360-r-d-opti-compass/22191/p

Keep both eyes open and aim with the compass so that the sighting line meets the
target when viewing through the lens. In R-models the main scale indicates the
reading to the target you are aiming at and the reversed scale indicates the reading
from your target to the aimed location. This feature is of great help, especially at sea,
when determining exact locations. Use your left or right eye for reading the compass
depending on your personal preferences. When both eyes are open, an optical
illusion makes the sighting line extend above the body of the compass over the target.
This increases reading accuracy and speed.
Heterophoria (an eye disorder some persons suffer from) may deteriorate the reading
accuracy at times. This can be controlled in the following fashion: Keep both eyes
open and take a reading. Then close one of your eyes. If there is no significant
change in the reading, there is no directional discrepancy in the vision axes of your
eyes and both eyes may be kept open during orienteering. If a charge is noted, keep
only one eye open and aim half way over the compass body. The sighting line now
rises above the instrument body and is visible against the target.

Not sure about this if I sight through the compass with just one eye i definitely get a different reading??? Maybe I have this disorder but I was always taught using the 2 eye method. The thing is my different reading is in the opposite direction than what my inst. tech readso.O

Thanks again for all who responded.

> Question: Are you standing over point 2 or say 15 feet behind it looking over the gun at the backsite?
>
> If you are over the point I can see a 7 degree spread over 3 readings by 3 different people. However if you are 15 feet back looking thru the two points I would expect a little less of a variance.

Maybe not 15' but about 6 feet or so sighting over the top of the ts through the rough sighting cross hairs.

Try an experiment by balancing that Suunto on a lath. Have each of the crew take turns reading it to themselves and compare your results.

^^^You will never get the same bearing as this guy^^^^

Seriously though, it could be a left or right eye dominance thing. Are you both the same?

I carry a hammer in my vest and if I'm not careful to hold the compass out at full arms length, the attraction from the hammer can pull the needle off by several degrees. Another thing I like to do is periodically stop at a road I know to be constructed on a meridian and check the centerline (known geodetic azimuth) with my compass to see how accurately it's reading.