NavList:

I own a Freiberger too. I worked for a small Hydrographic Survey firm in the early 80's whuch went bust owing my colleague and I wages. So we helped ourselves to what ever equipment we thought useful. There was two sextants so, we had one each.

Mine is No. 781259. It has what I am sure is an original calibration certificate, unfortunately it is not dated.

In 2000ish I decided to have a proper look and realised that there were no shades, they had been removed, as the sextants were bought for horizontal work when surveying. Though I have no idea if they were ever used.

I managed to find a chap in East Anglia, where the company used to be based. He explained that he probably removed them and, was able to sell back to me. He also sent a flyer for a prism. This was new to me, but I bought one out of interest.

Since leaving the Merchant Navy, I became a Land and Hydrographic Surveyor and, these days I work mainly in the construction industry. A couple of years after buying the prism I needed to establish the location where two pipes would meet in a field of mud, there was no simple way using conventional survey methods so, I used the sextant plus prism in horizontal mode, and took about 15 mins. I am pretty certain that it will be the only time that a sextant has been used on a construction site.

Regards. Andy