NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Sisteco Prismatic Compass
From: Robert Eno
Date: 2004 Mar 19, 08:17 -0500
From: Robert Eno
Date: 2004 Mar 19, 08:17 -0500
Many thanks for all of the responses from the
various members.
It appears that, overall, I am hooped and will have
to purchase a new hand-held compass if I want the illumination feature. It is a
sad commentary on the way things are made nowadays. No such a thing as
replacement parts or, for that matter, instruments that lend themselves to
repair.
Contrast this to the things made long ago: Take for
example, the C.Plath Sextant and accessories. Everything is fastened together
with screws of varying sizes. Every component can be removed, opened up and
repaired. Nowadays, it is too expensive to design things in this manner. Cheaper
to use glue rather than screws. Is that part N/S? Oh well, throw it away
and buy a new widget.
On a related note, I did a google seach for C.Plath
and found to my shock, that they no longer exist; that they were bought out by
Sperry (a venerable firm that has been around for some time). I also did a
search of Weems and Plath and found that they appear to no longer sell their own
model of brass sextant; they now market the Tamaya.
Is this the end of the era of the superb
craftsmanship of the German sextant? Is Cassens and Plath still around?
Are they solvent?
I am increasingly feeling like an anachronism. My
world is being steamrollered by cheap crap, GPS, and a quick fix (no pun
intended).
A Friday morning lament. Thanks again for
your assistance folks.
Robert Eno
Good judgement comes from experience and a lot
of that comes from bad judgement.
-- Texas Bix Bender: A Cowboy's Guide to Life
