[Outcast (Carlton)]

Hi there,

I'm ex- Navy, Seaman Officer (Now known as a Maritime Warfare Officer)

Trained as a midshipman to use a sextant & conduct navigation out of sight of land to obtain open ocean navigation qualification & then required to do a full days run every 6 months to retain the qual (morning stars, morni g sun sight, meridian passage, afternoon sun & evening stars). Accuracy required, within 1nm of gps position.

It's not easy but, with correct technique you can get very good at accurate measurements. First of all there is getting yourself well balanced & then once you bring a star down to the horizon you need to swing the sextant (sweeping motion) across the horizon to make sure you have brought it down vertically.

Takes practice but, very doable.

You can also use one for extremely precise coastal navigation using horizontal sextant angles & for the measuremement of heights using vertical sextant angles together with some calculations for height of eye. We commonly used a book called Norries maritime tables (or something like that) for VSA calculations.

I take my hat off to mariners such as Magellan & the like who used quadrants as well as the later, sextant to accurately plot their positions without the use of accurate time pieces (required for calculating longitude).

I could ramble for hours about 'old school's navigation... it's a fascinating topic...

Cheers

Carlton