Sextant

[Tony in SD]

LOTS of people are going to be totally lost WHEN the satellites are knocked out.

10-4. Miss Candy and I decided to have a night out without our phones. So off we went somewhere in Colorado in search of a pre planed establishment. We could not find it. So we did what we would have 40 years ago. We stopped at a gas station and asked. To our surprise, no one in the modern day gas station knew where it was either. I guess they couldn't find their way home either without GPS on their phones.

 

[PJH]

I've always wanted to own a sextant. Not because I actually need one; I just thought it would be a cool thing to have. Last week that thought came back when I decided our Florida condo really needs a sextant hanging on the wall. So I started shopping, and it turns out you can buy all sorts of sextants on eBay.

There are plenty of fake brass sextants for less than fifty bucks. In fact, even Harbor Freight sold them at one time. But they're clearly fakes and I wanted something that at least looks real. Now all the real sextants cost several hundred or even several thousand dollars. But for $110 bucks I bought this aluminum sextant, shipping included. At first glance it looks like the real thing, but of course on closer inspection it's clearly a fake. I'm quite certain it was not made by the Tamaya company, and it certainly wasn't made in Japan. It was probably made in India, since it was shipped FedEx from Bangalore.

A few things about it I'll note: The handle is marked "SEXTANT" in large letters, which helps me distinguish it from other sextant-shaped objects in my junk drawer. On the front side it says "Tamaya Sextant", even though real six thousand dollar Tamaya sextants just say "Tamaya". It has a micrometer just like a real Tamaya sextant, so it should be accurate down to a minute of angle. (Every yachtsman knows that a minute of latitude is exactly equal to one nautical mile.) However, it lacks the vernier scale necessary to get down to a tenth of a minute (i.e. a tenth of a NM). There are a number of filters which are used to shoot the sun. Will they keep you from going blind? Who knows. (Back in the days, navy navigators were all blind in one eye from shooting the sun.) One of these days I'll take it out and give it a try.

The last pic shows the sextant hanging on the wall of our condo.
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I know absolutely nothing about sextants or how to use one. When I was a kid, 1970, working on a survey crew, I learned that the boss and one of the higher crew members was going to "shoot Polaris" that night at precisely 9 PM. I begged to be allowed to go and watch - no pay. There was a high hilltop in Alexander County, Illinois that had some precisely set survey monuments. They used these monuments and the North Star at a precise time to set some points that would later be used for the alignment of a bridge across the Mississippi River. I assume that the same process was used on the Missouri side of the river. I was not privy to the mathematics, but I was fascinated to observe the process that they went through. It was a 100 mile round trip drive for me, but I don't regret it. The I-57 bridge over the Mississippi at Cairo, Illinois is still in use today.

 

[MarkB_MI]

10-4. Miss Candy and I decided to have a night out without our phones. So off we went somewhere in Colorado in search of a pre planed establishment. We could not find it. So we did what we would have 40 years ago. We stopped at a gas station and asked. To our surprise, no one in the modern day gas station knew where it was either. I guess they couldn't find their way home either without GPS on their phones.

When was the last time you saw a road map at a gas station? I ended up buying a road atlas off Amazon because truck stops (which used to be a reliable source) don't carry them any more.

 

[MarkB_MI]

LOTS of people are going to be totally lost WHEN the satellites are knocked out.

I suspect there are quite a few tanker captains right now who are wishing they'd packed their sextants and almanacs.

 

[Tony in SD]

When was the last time you saw a road map at a gas station? I ended up buying a road atlas off Amazon because truck stops (which used to be a reliable source) don't carry them any more.

2006 That is the last time I bought a new one. 2005 I started using GPS but kept an atlas for backup.

 

[MarkB_MI]

2006 That is the last time I bought a new one. 2005 I started using GPS but kept an atlas for backup.

I continue to buy one every few years. I like to have one in the vehicle when we travel, because having a physical map gives you context you can't easily see on a phone or GPS.

When I moved to Los Angeles back in '79, one of my first purchases was a street finder (aka "Thomas Guide"), a book of maps and an index where you could find any address in LA northern Orange counties. This was indispensable before GPS and smartphones came along. I also used to have gazetteers for California and Michigan, which show every road in the state. You used to need these when traveling in the boonies. Of course, now you have people following their GPSes to death in the desert.

 

[olddavid]

I continue to buy one every few years. I like to have one in the vehicle when we travel, because having a physical map gives you context you can't easily see on a phone or GPS.

Amen!

 

[used red MN]

That's what a phone is for

Correction “smart” phone! A dumb phone would also lead to “ship wreck”