NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Sextant used on Graf Zeppelin
From: George Huxtable
Date: 2010 Feb 13, 20:43 -0000
From: George Huxtable
Date: 2010 Feb 13, 20:43 -0000
Geoffrey Kolbe asked- |I have just been watching a documentary about the flight of the Graf | Zeppelin around the world in 1929. I managed to capture this image | http://www.pisces-press.com/images/sextant_on_Graf_Zeppelin.jpg of a | sight being taken from the wheelhouse of the ship. I would welcome an | identification of the sextant. It looks like a marine sextant with a | bubble attachment. Not a bubble. It's a "System Gago Continho" sextand, with two spirit levels to show when it's horizontal in both planes. The rights belonged to the Portuguese navy, who licenced Plath to produce it; hence the familiar shape of the Plath frame. It can be found in figs 171 and 172 of Peter Ifland's excellent "Taking the Stars", with an explanation from page 161. On request, I will scan and send images. Ifland states that it was taken on the Graf Zeppelin circumnavigation. George. contact George Huxtable, at george@hux.me.uk or at +44 1865 820222 (from UK, 01865 820222) or at 1 Sandy Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK.