NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Plastic vs Metal Sextants
From: Rodney Myrvaagnes
Date: 1999 Aug 27, 11:41 AM
From: Rodney Myrvaagnes
Date: 1999 Aug 27, 11:41 AM
On Fri, 27 Aug 1999 18:17:01 +0100, George Huxtable wrote: > >My experience, over the last 30 years, has been with Ebbco plastic >sextants, and my arguments will relate to those instruments. Many readers >will be unfamiliar with the Ebbco, so I will start by describing it. I bought an Ebbco for about $50 US in 1977, with which to teach myself celestial. I agree with George that you could go around the world with it. On a 26-foot boat the pitching of the platform will wipe out the accuracy advantages of a good sextant. However, I found the Ebbco very unpleasant to use, because it was easy to get sunlight in my eye around the filters, scattered from something. I also noticed that sunlight caused the index error to drift for about 30 minutes after taking it out of the box. Caveat: I don't know the model of the Ebbco. It may be a cheaper one than those George described. I came upon a very nice brass sextant at an auction, with nobody else interested because it wasn't old enough (1958), so I haven't used the Ebbco since. A few years ago I tried a Davis Mk 10 on a trip from Nova Scotia to Maine, and found it much more comfortable to use than my memories of the Ebbco. Rodney Myrvaagnes J36 Gjo/a Associate Editor Electronic Products 20+ years without a car, a TV, or a website