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    Re: What is a good sextant to buy?
    From: Bruce Cutting
    Date: 2019 Sep 03, 15:36 -0600

    I'm a proponent of the USSR SNO-T.  It is a copy of the Friberger.
    Has excellent rigidity and has the lowest backlash of any sextant I've
    used.  They are readily available on ebay for $250 - $325.  I
    purchased one mine from India and had good results.  I believe this
    sextant is a better value than the Astra and can be had for about the
    same price if not less.  I suggest you ask Bill for his opinion of the
    SNO-T, I am very satisfied with mine.
    
    Given that, I have the following advice.  Purchase a copy of Bill
    Morris's (Nav list menber) "The nautical sextant".  Covers just about
    any sextant ever made and he is an excellent surce of information.
    Take your time, don't just rush out and purchase a 2nd sextant - the
    one you have is quite usable.
    
    
    Keep practicing with the Davis MK25.  It is a very usable sextand and
    wil give you lots of experience learning how to use a sextant.  A
    couple of pieces of information on the Davis if you haven't already
    figgured them out.
    
    1) Always approach the sight from the same direction (either
    decreasing the reading or increasing the reading).  Never go past
    coincidence with the horizon and then correct by going back the other
    way (unless you go quite a bit past).  The reason is the Davis has
    extreme backlash.  Try measuring the indes error comming from
    different sides of zero to find out exactly how much.
    
    2) Temperature stability.  The mechanism may bind with changes in
    temperature.  Le the sextant come to temperature B4 measuring.  Check
    IE between measurements and do not correct for IE each time.  With a
    bit of practice (and patience), you can come quite close to the
    accuracy of the better sextants.
    Quoting Philippe Posth :
    
    > The best sextant is the one used by the best user.
    >
    
    [Note from FER: A reminder to one and all. The sextant is properly
    referred to as a SNO-T, not a "SNO-T" (unless you use proper Russian
    Cyrillic characters, which only one NavList member has done). I will
    continue to edit posts which use anything but SNO-T to refer to this
    type of sextant.]
    

       
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