Sextant circa 1919 for Wayne. by blinkings
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Description
This sextant is on display in a glass cabinet at the Polly Woodside museum in Melbourne Australia.
Comments (12)
kgb224
Superb capture my friend. God Bless.
Crabbycabby
Great image. Where do you put the batteries?
whaleman
A beautiful old gem, thanks Andrew! I do love sextants, well really I like just about anything with sex in it, LOL! I trained long and hard to master the use of a sextant in order to complete my Navigator's requirement for open ocean navigation anywhere in the world, and took my sight reduction tests in Alberta believe it or not. The sight reductions were sent to Ottawa (Canada's capital) and were graded and judged and accepted about 6 months later. Doing sight reductions on land or small lakes in Alberta just made the whole process more difficult. At the time I could not afford to drive to Vancouver to do them at sea, nor did I have anything to get out to sea even if I got to Vancouver! Well, long story short, I passed, having used my own sextant which I still have. It is plastic but better than metal in many ways because of corrosion resistance and no expansion in heat etc. The very first thing I did with my sextant (which simply measures an angle with great precision) was to take it out in the daytime and measure the sngle between the Sun's upper limb and lower limb, from which I calculated the distance between myself and the Sun. It calculated to a number which was between apogee and perigee, so the measurement was correct and I was impressed with the accuracy. I had no way to tell what the exact distance was at the time. In later years when I had my first GPS, I went back to the locations I used for my sight tests and found my sights had yielded positions within 1/10 mi from the GPS locations. Not bad for a $140 instrument!
jayfar
A lovely old instrument Andrew and I loved the Trucking video.
debbielove
See? It's that subject again.. Sex! lol Sorry, I'm in an odd mood.. lol Great looking sextant (who named these things?), in perfect condition, good shot mate! Rob
Faemike55
Wonderful device Great capture
Maxidyne
Sextant Blake... he was a detective wasn't he Rob? Seriously though Andrew this is one impressive bit of kit that's beautifully preserved.
JuliSonne
I'm not boaters but the old instruments fascinate me. Just like the old heavy diving equipment.
pimanjc
Beautiful old piece of equipment.
Sea_Dog
Nice shot - like whaleman I spent quite a bit of time learning to use a sextant and doing the necessary calculations to fix position. These are fine instruments that have to be calibrated periodically.
Chipka
I haven't learned how to use one of these, but I love the way they look. It's funny how "old school" stuff works just as well, if not better than our newfangled, pocket-pad, GPS, Facebook Status Updaters. I kinda like the idea of finding out where you are, without having the Facebook "Share" option. And, to top it off, this is a crisp, gorgeous, wonderfully detailed photo.
danapommet
Wonderful presentation but to complicated for me!