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NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Gary LaPook
Date: 2011 May 2, 12:58 -0700
I found that the A-7 sextant is the most useful when you are constrained in your movements. I took sights with mine while confined in a coach class seat in the back of an Airbus and was able to take sights through about 120 degrees of azimuth, 7 to 11 o'clock, through the small window. The A-7 is unique in two ways. First, the index prism is at the front of the instrument and you can place it up against the window which allows high altitude sights that would not be possible with other bubble sextants. The other way that it is unique is that the eyepiece swivels so you can hold the instrument in front of you and take sight over your shoulder. It also has an averager. it might be a good one for you to use in your 737, look on ebay.
See:
https://sites.google.com/site/fredienoonan/topics/pionneer-octant
I paid $50 plus $30 dollars shipping from Ebay in 2007.
You can probably tell from my website that I have been investigating the navigation of the Earhart flight in order to refute some of the wild theories put forth by those who don't know anything about celestial navigation. The reason that I got the A-7 was to deal with those who claimed that Noonan would not have been able to take sights in the Electra but my experience with the A-7 (the same as the octant being used by Noonan except for the addition of the averager) I found that it would have been easy for him to take these sights including high altitude sight of the moon, above 65 degrees. (We know that he shot the sun on the flight to Dakar and its altitude was above 65 degrees at the time.)
gl
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