How to Use Plastic Sextants: With Applications to Metal Sextants and a Review of Sextant Piloting Kindle Edition

Absolutely marvelous how-to treatise about using plastic sextants by master navigator David Burch. I wanted so badly to learn how to use a sextant at age 68 without spending $thousands on the subject. After extensive research on the available toys, I found a new Davis Mark III plastic sextant for $50. Using only the instructions that came with the instrument, I learned how to precisely find my location using the Mark III sextant and plotting spreadsheet from Bill Ritchie. I really wanted better resolution; so, more research and found a Davis Mark 15 for $40 on eBay in perfect condition. This time, I wanted to know more about using my plastic sextants and found a monograph by David Burch named "How to Use Plastic Sextants". What an I opener. After absorbing all I could, I wanted even more info and found the 2nd Edition of "Emergency Navigation" by David Burch and also bought Sight Reduction Tables for my latitude on the planet. Never knew there were so many constellations and star clusters to locate the North Star. I am thrilled to feed my hobby interest with knowledge from David Burch using his books and Bill Ritchie's practical plotting spreadsheets. I've learned the Davis Mark III and Mark 15 sextants are remarkable backup instruments, but they work just as well as two thousand dollar instruments when you get to know them. I assiduously recommend David Burch's treatise about "How To Use Plastic Sextants" and his Starpath School of Navigation, and his compendium of navigation books.

another in the series of great books by David Burch ... in this book he covers basic care and calibration of the sextant, discusses the pros and cons of plastic sextants vs metal sextants, where and when and in what applications and situations a plastic sextant might be just as useful or perhaps more useful as a metal sextant ... and despite the name of the book, this book is also a very good general introduction of metal sextants as well ... Burch then goes into the details of not only celestial navigation, but piloting techniques using the sextant to augment or even replace the magnetic compass ... he even introduces and discusses the topic of using the sextant with Stark tables to clear lunar distances, a topic I don't believe he discusses elsewhere in his books on Celestial Navigation ... I would definitely recommend this book to anyone as a cotinuation of his series on inland and coastal navigation (with the separate workbook), celestial navigation, the use of the starfinder, and marine weather forecasting (with the separate workbook) ... even without the separate workbooks, however, each text contains numberous fully worked out and explained problems and many other practice problems for the student of each topic ... David Burch is my go to authority on any topic related to marine navigation ... I have never been disappointed in any of his excellent books.

Gets you using your sextant right away. It’s comparisons between sextants (with data) shows real life readings for each kind. Most authoritative book I have read on the subject, and I have read 5 or 6 different books on the subject of sextants currently in circulation.

Many Years ago I was forced to learn to navigate using a sextant as a navy Aviator assigned to a destroyer. It pissed me off, but I learned and eventually really enjoyed it. This is a good book! Now, I am relearning, for shear enjoyment.

Excellent book by Master Navigator. Everybody interested in the art will find something new and useful. The techniques described will improve the results achieved using both plastic and metal sextants. However, I closed the book with the feeling that plastic sextant shall be used by a very skillful operator to achieve decent results. Thus the value of the plastic sextant as an inexpensive entry point is probably exaggerated.

all of it.

David Burch is an expert on celestial navigation. This book about the <$100 (used) plastic sextant as an alternative to a proper metal sextant costing hundreds of dollars is excellent. He discusses the strengths and overcoming the weaknesses of these plastic sextants. Everyone that sails out of the sight of land should have at least a familiarity of celestial navigation, even if only to make them understand and appreciate the electronic GPS devices. ​

Have had a rarely used plastic sextant for a long time, and I wondered just how accurate it really was. This book not only provided comparative data of a plastic sextant in use , but also how to improve its accuracy by averaging several shots and minimizing thermal expansion. The small book is well written by a seasoned sailor and I consider it to be the gold standard for the subject of plastic sextants.

Arrived, as expected.

Very good book for explaining the finer details in understandable language.

Nice item

I owned a Davis Mark 15 or 25 sextant 25 years ago but didn't really know how to use it, and on the Great Lakes celestial navigation isn't terribly useful. Now that I am "blue-water" and studying CEL NAV, I found this book to be absolutely what I needed to know; full of practical advice given by people who actually use sextants offshore. Five stars!!! Great Value...

Good instructions. Helps you understand how to specifically use the less expensive sextants.