NavList:

Firstly, apologies to all for my being slow to thank those who supplied answers to my questions re the Moon recently.  We’ve been rather busy just lately.  I keep getting pangs of conscience over not having cleared the lunars I shot last month, especially last Saturday when during our 10,000-step night-prowl we saw, not a cow, but Jupiter jump over the Moon.  Well not quite right over, but from 11.00 O’clock to 1.00 O’clock.  No, it wasn’t our No5 Covid shot earlier in the day kicking in, we actually saw this between the start of our walk and going to bed.  This brought home the value of lunars although David I., at least, will be the first to say ‘above’ or ‘below’ is the worst possible geometry for a lunar.  Near horizontal shots on Friday 7^th were a much better set up.  Fear not, we took a series on 7^th Oct, but I have yet to clear them.  I wonder if I ever will.

Antoine
You ask for experiences with the Moon.  I wonder if your feelings about the Moon began with your Service training, and with your instructors.  Certainly, during my RAF Navigator training the Moon was always presented as something as a bête noir, and lunars were only mentioned for 30 seconds or less as best left to professors of mathematics.  It must be remembered that these were ordinary RAF Navigators who had only ever attempted to centre the Moon in the bubble of a bubble sextant.  Pendulous reference sextants were only just becoming available in quantity, and many had only used Hughes MkIXBMs until quite recently.  We certainly used MkIXBMs during our basic training and Smith’s bubble periscopic sextant Mk2s during our advanced training.  PinA always appeared as a possible correction on our pre-comp forms, so it wasn’t as if Moon PLs were forbidden.  It’s just that few ever claimed any great success with them. In the RAF MOB was always exactly 15' of arc west per minute of time be it for the Sun, Moon, planets, or stars, and I don't remember ever being told otherwise, but memory is rarely perfect.  In the Vulcan with two sextant ports and two sextants, which by then were pendulous reference Mk 2a,&bs, so Moon shots might have been easier, ‘cut’ for a 7-shot sandwich fix was the overriding criteria.  The Moon rarely fitted, but you had to be aware of its position to avoid stars being masked by ‘Moonglow’.  DaveP