NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Sextants over the Internet
From: Gordon Talge
Date: 2004 Mar 21, 22:09 -0800
From: Gordon Talge
Date: 2004 Mar 21, 22:09 -0800
Hi All, I don't know about you, but I would rather spend the extra money and see the used sextant up close and personal, before I buy it. The only sextant I would buy sight unseen is from a reputable dealer like Celeste Aire. Anyway, if you are going to spend a bundle on a sextant, why don't you just cut loose and spend the money and get a new one you can be sure of. A few thousand bucks more or less won't make any difference considering we are going to use it on our $20,000,000 yacht. Since I don't have a $20,000,000 yacht, the Astra IIIB is just fine for me ( and no doubt would still be fine even with the $20,000,000 yacht ). BTW, you can get burned at some of these "antique" stores in tourist areas. They have supposedly antique sextants for sale such as Stanley from England. I have heard, I think on this list that these sextants are just coffee table conversation pieces rather than a real calibrated scientific instruments and most of them are just "knock off" repos for show. Another thought. I think we are living in the wrong day and age for government surplus sextants and stuff. I was reading in a navigation book, circa 1963 where the author said you could pick up a good used US Navy WWII sextant for $50 give or take. Considering that it was only about 18 years after the war I guess so. However, it is now getting close to 60 years later. Now here in Southern California you can blow $50 easy on taking someone out to eat, so I don't think $50 to someone in 1963 is the same as $50 is to us today. -- Gordon -- ,,, (. .) +-------------------------ooO-(_)-Ooo------------------------+ | Gordon Talge WB6YKK e-mail: gtalge AT pe DOT net | | Department of Mathematics http://www.nlmusd.k12.ca.us | | Norwalk High School Norwalk, CA | | (o- Debian / GNU / Linux | | //\ The Choice of the GNU Generation | | v_/_ .oooO | | - E Aho Laula - ( ) Oooo. - Wider is Better - | +-------------------------\ (---( )-------------------------+ \_) ) / (_/