NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: David Pike
Date: 2023 Nov 8, 11:33 -0800
Michael Josefsson
I copied pages from the MkIXBM manual for you, but Jean-Philippe has beaten me to it with the manual for MkIXA. What I have got from the rear cover of one of Paul Brewer’s pamphlets is a cutaway drawing of how the MkIX reservoir cap is frequently presented compared to how it actually is. I include the photograph below.
I just tried to make a bubble in my favorite MkIXBM exactly per the Manual, and I can assure you that the method works. However, if the sextant’s been inactive for the last 70 years, you might just have to keep trying it, because if a clean chamber has no bubble, it’s hard to decide if it’s full of liquid or empty. Incidentally, you won’t ruin a Hughes bubble chamber the first time you put it away with a bubble showing or the diaphragm unrelieved. I think there must be a ‘gremlin’ in my sextant cupboard, because I frequently take out a bubble sextant and find it in that state, and I would never leave one like that, would I? DaveP
