NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Bubble sextants on eBay
From: Gary LaPook
Date: 2007 Jan 02, 01:23 -0800
From: Gary LaPook
Date: 2007 Jan 02, 01:23 -0800
If you can find a MA-2 on ebay I can recommend it. I purchased one several years ago and it works fine in flight. It has the averager from the pariscopic sextant but without the tall periscope tube, much handier in a small cockpit. But, to keep in mind when buying on ebay, when I received the MA-2 the pellicle was broken making it useless. Fortunately I was able to remove the pellicle from one of my spare parts periscopic sextants and used it to replace the pellicle in the MA-2. It was like doing delicate brain surgery. If you get a pariscopic sextant for use on the ground you can place it on top of a tripod to make it steadier for taking the shot. I bought an A-10A from Ken about 30 years ago and got very good results with it in flight including transatlantic flying (before the days of LORAN C and GPS.) It still work good and I occasionally drag it out and take sights with it to stay in practice. Regarding electrical power for a bubble sextant, you can replace the 28 volt bulbs with 6 volt bulbs and use 4 AA batteries in a pack to power the lights in the periscopic and MA-2. The A-10A uses 3 D cells to power the lights and also the averager. Gary LaPook. > > Alexandre E Eremenko wrote: > >> >> I was not considering a periscopic sextant yet, because >> I thought they are too heavy (aren't they supposed to >> be hanging on some hook in the airplane during an >> observation?) What is the weight of your periscopic sextant? > > > Periscopic sextants were designed to install in a mount in the aircraft > ceiling. Weight is about 6 pounds, I think. That's not bad. I find the > mental effort of a 2-minute observation worse than the physical effort! > It requires nonstop concentration and coordination to maintain the > correct sight picture. > >> That's a big problem of course. As I never held one in my >> hands, I doubt that I can give to a seller good >> instruction. > > > > respect. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to NavList@fer3.com To , send email to NavList-@fer3.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---