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Frank,

>> What if they just confiscate it in a check..."

> They don't do that.
> At least we haven't had any stories of that on NavList, and there have
> been a reasonable number of reports from people who have had no problem
> taking sextants as carry-on items. I may try it next week when I go to
> the prime meridian, though it's probably a little silly to haul a

That sounds encouraging, though I do not know the statistics: how
frequently the list participants take sextants in the airplane cabin,
to what destinations they fly, and what is the chance that a person whose
sextant is confiscated will complain to the list:-)

(I had a pocket watch confiscated once, not by security, but by Ukrainian
customs. They said the watch was gold and was not declared. In fact
it was not gold. But how can you argue with secutiry or customs
in a country like Ukraine? My
girlfriend had a laptop taken by "security" of Polish airlines,
during a change of plane in Warsaw,
and she never saw it again).

An air sextant like my Mk IX A with clockwork averager should look
especially suspicious to the security: it is essentially an enclosed metal
box, with batteries, clockwork mechanism, that is everything a good little
bomb is expected to have.

I even planned to buy a special non-expensive, replacable sextant for
transatlantic
travel, not to be upset too much for the loss of it. SNO-M looked like
an ideal sextant for this, but they disappeared from e-Bay.
(6 years ago there was a choice of 3-4 of them every week at about $250).

But if something happens with my precious genuine XIX century Troughton
and Simms pocket sextant I will be really very upset.

Alex.

   

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