NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Advice on Sextant
From: Bill Morris
Date: 2009 Aug 4, 01:18 -0700
From: Bill Morris
Date: 2009 Aug 4, 01:18 -0700
Chris wrote "The SNO-T is basically a copy of the Plath." This is certainly true of the SNO-M (the cyryllic C and H correspond to the English S and N). The C Plath satellite factories which had been moved to the east in WWII to escape bombing in Hamburg were abandoned to the Russian advance and the wartime aluminium alloy C Plath became the Russian postwar SNO-M. The frame and nearly all the other parts appear to have been die-cast in the same dies. The SNO-M comes with only a x 6 inverting telescope. Good as they are, they are no match for.... The SNO-T (SNO-T if you must), Sextan Navigacionnyi s Osvetitelem-T or tropicalised navigational sextant with illumination, is based on the Freiberger Prazisionsmechanik Trommelsextant or vice-versa. The early examples of the Freiberger were identical with the SNO-T. Later ones were more lightly built and probably inferior to the SNO-T, which is a formidable and seriously under-valued instrument. Both have Zeiss optics. The SNO-T has a 4 x 40mm Galilean and 6 x 30mm inverting scope, while the Freiberger has only a 4 x 40 Galilean. The SNO-T is let down by its case, which is not up to the task of protecting the instrument in transit. If you do buy one, impress on the sender that there must be plenty of packaging included _inside_ the case, to protect the sextant if it breaks loose from its moorings. By the way, aluminium alloy frames are generally superior to bronze ones in spite of being rather cheaper. Bill Morris Pukenui New Zealand --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ NavList message boards: www.fer3.com/arc Or post by email to: NavList@fer3.com To , email NavList-@fer3.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
