NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
All Weather Sextant - The Radiosextant
From: Igor S.
Date: 2019 Aug 30, 08:45 -0700
From: Igor S.
Date: 2019 Aug 30, 08:45 -0700
Hello everyone,
Recently I've read several interesting articles about radiosextant (both in English and in Russian). It's immunity to foul weather conditions is the biggest advantage.
The articles above discuss the working principles, various technical aspects, problems and limitations of radiosextants.
I attached the Russian article (since it is free of charge). At least you can see some pictures and radiosextant tracking unit mounted on the retractable pole of a submarine and a little english annotation in the end. It is capable to track only sun and moon (stars are too weak sources of microwave radiation).
One of the problems emphasized in Russian publication was that radiation center of the sun does not necessarily coincide with it's geometrical center. The possible solution was a worldwide broadcasting of this correction.
Radiosextant considered to be one of the most complicate pieces of shipboard equipment. I've never seen it in real and it's photos are very scarce (google it).
According to the russian publication it is no longer in use. In USSR it existed longer than in US navy due to later development of satellite navigation. However I found some implications that it may be still in use today:
Does anyone here who had an experience with radiosextants ?
Is it somehow still in use as a backup source of navigation in US navy? or it is just a museum item (which museum then?). Does a well written manual exist ?
kind regards,
Igor
P.S.: To download scientific articles free of charge follow the wikipedia link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
