
NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: U.S. government sextant specification
From: Jared Sherman
Date: 2003 Jan 10, 15:38 -0500
From: Jared Sherman
Date: 2003 Jan 10, 15:38 -0500
Paul- I expect the Navy will need to re-examine the manual for climbing out of a pickle barrel, now that the Navistar Classic is out of production and no commercial sextant can meet their needs. I wonder if C&P had donated the Horizon Ultra's to the Naval Academy, or the spec had simply changed since those were purchased. Indeed, if the USN has purchased *any* sextants since the 1996 spec was written? By contrast, I recently read someplace that the older USN spec (post WW2) was +-30 seconds, which had been considered "good enough" apparently. Any ex-USN navigators amongst us who could shed light?