NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: David Pike
Date: 2022 Oct 22, 12:35 -0700
Attached are photographs of Chapter V ‘The Construction of Air Sextants’ from the 1938 version, 1949 reprint, of Arthur J Hughes ‘The Sextant Book’. As well as the relatively well-known Hughes MkVIII sextant, the chapter also introduces an air sextant which I’d never come across before, namely the MkXII (not the US Link Mk12). If one assumes this is a Hughes design, there must have been a number of developments going on in the Hughes Factory in the late 1930s. The MkXII appears to be a further development of the MkVIII whereas the MkIX was a new shape altogether. One can only assume that the MkIX was turned out to be the more practical or preferable design, so went on to be produced by the thousand, whereas the MkXII was never proceeded with. Has any other reader come across the Hughes MkXII Air Sextant? DaveP
