NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: French Sextant
From: Jared Sherman
Date: 2004 Aug 5, 15:29 -0400
From: Jared Sherman
Date: 2004 Aug 5, 15:29 -0400
Jim-In the perversity of "stuff" I found my $10 Timex was keeping time better than my good watches. And since I don't like to take my wristwatch on/off, or fuss with loose stuff, it struck me one day that the watch would fit very nicely AROUND THE TELESCOPE. Honest. With a stretchy plastic or velcro strap, you can "wear" it on the telescope, so when you take the sextant away from your eye and turn it sideways, there's the time. With no sleeves in the way. Still, that's something out of place. Then I found something that worked better. I have a $10 digital stopwatch that's not as accurate on the annual basis. But, if I hack the stopwatch to any even minute/hour, I can velcro it on the handle on the sextant, so that the "lap" button is right under my thumb or forefinger. LAP, not start/stop. The lap timer stops the display without stopping the count, so when I hit "lap" I've recorded an instant, without taking my eye off the 'scope. Now I can do what I please, look at the lap time, note it, hit "lap" again to resume the original count, take another reading, etc. If I've gotten the stopwatch synched on the hour exactly, the "lap" reading will be the exact minute/second from that hour, so there's nothing special needed to read it, just note the hour and the lap time. $10 stopwatch, 25c worth of velcro... And no loose "stuff" to fuss with.