NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Bubble Sextant Electrical Bugs
From: Robert Swartz
Date: 2020 Sep 2, 22:06 -0700
From: Robert Swartz
Date: 2020 Sep 2, 22:06 -0700
In reconditioning the Bausch and Lomb aircraft bubble sextants (and others) The most common electrical problems I run into are:
1. burned out bulbs, 2. loose or broken wires, 3. bad ground.
Most of the WWII vintage instruments work off of chassis grounding and corrosion of screws and the sextant body
prevent current continuity.. I use 40% phosphoric acid followed by water rinse to clean corrosion.
A wire brush or wire wheel on a grinder also work.
Occasionally I run into a bad rehostat which I replace.
All my sextant work is done using a multimeter to check voltage, resistance and continuity of lighting circuits.
Robert Swartz
