NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Geoffrey Kolbe
Date: 2019 Nov 17, 00:13 -0800
Michael Bradley wrote:
"Is it a 'flying boat' sextant?"
Indeed, I think David Pike was describing just such a sextant a few posts ago.
It is actually not a sextant - it is an octact as the scale only goes up to 90°.
I have one which was marketed at the small boat/yacht market after the war as Hughes obviously had a bunch of them left over. That said, they usually go for quite high prices on ebay as they are quite rare. The particular instrument referred to does not seem to be a good specimen, however. The scope seems not to be original and it is altogether somewhat neglected. It does have a wooden box, though, which is definitely a rarity. I think all others I have seen have boxes made of Tufnol, a sort of engineering 'plastic' made of phenolic resin and paper which was popular during the war and in the 50s, but which is fearsomly expensive these days.
Geoffrey Kolbe
