NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Luc Desmedt
Date: 2026 Sep 25, 04:15 -0700
Yes, I mixed up the A-12 and the Mk IX. My apologies. I was thinking of the Mk IX while you were talking about the A-12.
I actually had an A-12 that was beyond repair, so I salvaged the bubble chamber and used it to make a bubble attachment. I made the attachment out of PVC because it was easy to work with, shape and glue. It worked very well.
I managed to open the chamber by spreading a pair of needle-nose pliers in the two opposite notches. I then repaired and refilled the chamber following the instructions in Bill Morris’s excellent PDFs from SextantBook.com, which I had downloaded some time ago.
I refilled the bubble chamber with xylene (X-Y-L-E-N-E), a rather unusual solvent that I eventually found in a specialist shop.
And it worked perfectly afterwards
