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Dear Robert,
Interesting site, indeed! I did not know about it:
www.warrenind.com/WKNavigation.html
Could not find the prices of their merchandise though,
or do they sell only on the phone rather than by Internet?

Anyway, I bought my protractor from "tuchkan" of Kaliningrad.
He has many of them, offers excellent photos and he is a nice
guy in general. Other "Soviet" sellers, mmely.ru, maurnavy
and bay_my_items also have plenty of them, just type "protractor"
on e-bay search. The price seems to be almost standard on e-bay:
$60 to $80. (I bought my one for $70.
You can see it by typing the e-bay number
3742233954 The whole link is too long to include).
But you have to add about $60
in the average for shipping and almost $40 or so for
the money transfer, as the Soviets cannot use PayPal, and/or
credit cards.
These extras make many "Soviet" items non-competitive).

On the protractor itself. It is made of some heavy alloy,
probably brass. It resembles a sextant in construction:
also has a worm skrew and a drum, actually two worms and two drums,
for each moving hand. It comes in a wood box with a "passport"
(=certificate), sometimes a brush. The certificate of my protractor
lists the instrumental error for each 10 degrees of the limb,
for each arm. The maximal correction is 2'.

I wonder what they were (are??) used for. Except the evident
task of determining a ship's position from the bearings of two
angles between three objects.

The book by A. J. Hughes "The Book of the Sextant" (1938)
briefly mentions them, calling them "Station Pointers",
has a picture of
one, exactly like my one,
and says: "A full description of the principle and use
can be found in the Admiralty Manual on the station pointer".

Can anyone suggest where to find this Manual, and/or what it
contains??

Alex.

On Wed, 22 Sep 2004, Robert Gainer wrote:

> Alex,
> The super-precise 3-armed protractor that you allude
> to is still made and
> used in this country. You can buy it at the manufactures
> web site at
> www.warrenind.com/WKNavigation.html, it comes in a right hand
> and left hand
> version. I am interested in your 3-arm protractor.

   

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