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(meteorobs) Plotting: Three Stooges Method

Hello All,
            As part of my continuing education in meteor observation, I
have slowly been working my way into plotting. I must admit, never have
I found anything that seemed so deceptively simple to be so
confoundingly frustrating.   A typical attempt at plotting a single
meteor may go something like this:
      5:40 UT, a meteor appears that *may* be coming from a known
radiant.  I decide to plot it.  I throw my ruler up into the air to
"place" the path.
      5:40:30,  I feel I have the path, now I need to see the time.  I
grope for my recorder, finally find the pause button, while still
holding the ruler to the sky.  I look down at the watch glued to the
recorder.  I look back up, and I no longer have the ruler placed exactly
where it should be.  I  place it back where I think it should be.
      5:41:30  I stare and stare and stare at that region of the sky and
finally realize the meteor was over the peak of Ophiuchus.
I cautiously put the ruler down and reach for my red light and charts.
I turn on the red light, and in order to free up my hands for plotting,
hold the light in my mouth.  I get stung on the tongue by an ant.  I
spit the ant and several grains of sand out, then return to the chart.
      5:42:30 An outburst of 15 simultaneous meteors occur while I am
staring down at my charts.  By now I can't remember
which direction the meteor was traveling, or what the beginning and end
point was, if I ever had them well to begin with.  I "plot" the meteor
just as the cat jumps on my lap and all my tools get scattered.
      5:43:30 A magnitude -7 fireball appears while I am looking down to
gather up my pencil, chart, ruler and recorder.  My chewing gum, I
notice, is quite gritty with sand now.
    And that was an EASY one!   Actually, most of the meteors appear
within my field of view, and go quickly on the chart I have out and I
don't really lose that much time.   But the most frustrating thing of
all, I think is getting home and not being able to accurately predict
the radiant drift for various minor shower radiants due to the
inadequacies of my charts.  I still don't know what one grid on the
Atlas Bruno chart represents, in degrees, and my Petersons charts have
the RA and dec, but I can't translate that well into actual degrees.
     So a few questions:  If I hold my 12" ruler to the sky at arms
length, how many degrees of sky am I covering?  It is approximately the
distance from Deneb to Altair.  I know the rule of thumb about fist size
being 10 degrees and open hand being about twenty, but there can be a
wide variation there among individuals.
     Also, do I need to join a guild or a lodge to get the secret
information contained within those plotting charts?  If I could
accurately measure distance on those charts, I wouldn't have to
aggravate Mark, Wayne, and others for current radiant positions.  Or is
there some easier way that I'm missing altogether?  (Wayne, I didn't get
the current Piscid position:>)
But until I started plotting, I never realized I had so many thumbs.
                               Thanks in Advance, Kim S. Youmans




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