NavList:

A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding

HOME

Francis Upchurch's Astra sextant...and my first lunar!
From: Jonathan Ho
Date: 2023 Feb 6, 14:10 -0800

Hi everyone,

A quick introduction from me - I'm a sailor from the UK, mostly sailing on the south coast and in the Solent, but living near Warwick (about as far from the sea as you can get!). I recently bought an Astra IIIb off ebay, from one Francis Upchurch - who pointed me in the direction of this forum when we spoke on the phone about it before the purchase. He was extremely polite and helpful, and I was excited to hear that he was an avid lunarian, as being competent with lunars was one of my goals when looking for a sextant to buy.

Upon more recent reading, I've discovered how active Francis was within this community, and the breadth and depth of his knowledge. I was sorry to hear of his ill health, but I am proud to own his sextant and hope to continue his legacy with lots of real-life celestial navigation of my own.

I have managed to make a start, with lunar distances of Mars and Jupiter on 31 January. It was so exciting to take the sights from my back garden, put the data into Frank's online calculator and show that I had made reasonably accurate measurements. I've followed this up a week later by working through the Stark forms, and after correcting a few mistakes in copying and arithmetic (made apparent by the online calculator) managed to make it all stack up. My first lunar!

Thanks again to Francis, and nice to meet you all.

Jonny

File:

What is NavList?

NavList is a community devoted to the preservation and practice of celestial navigation and other methods of traditional position-finding. We're a group of navigators, navigation enthusiasts and hobbyists, mathematicians and physicists, and historians interested in all aspects of navigation but primarily those techniques which are non-electronic.

To post a message, if you are already signed up as a NavList member, start a new discussion or reply to any posted message and use your posting code (this is a simple low-security password assigned when you join). You may also join by posting. Your first on-topic messsage automatically makes you a member, and a posting code will be assigned and emailed to you for future posts.

Uniquely, the NavList message boards also permit full interaction entirely by email. You can optionally receive individual posts or daily digests by email, and any member can post messages by email (bypassing the web site) by sending to our posting address which is "NavList@NavList.net". This functionality is similar to a traditional Internet mailing list: post by email, read by email, reply by email. Most members will prefer the web interface here for posting and replying to messages.

NavList is more than an online community... more about that another day.

© Copyright notice: please note that the rights to all messages and posts in this discussion group are held by their respective authors. No messages or text or images extracted from messages may be reproduced without the explicit consent of the message author. Email me, Frank Reed, if you have any questions.

Subject:
Author:
Start date:	(yyyymm dd)
End date:	(yyyymm dd)

NavList:

A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding

Compose Your Message

NavList

What is NavList?

Join / Get NavList ID Code

Retrieve a NavList ID Code

Email Settings

Custom Index

Add Images & Files
Name or NavList Code:	Email:

Name:
	(please, no nicknames or handles)
Email:

NavList ID Code: