I'd rather call you the guy I want to be flying with when all the expensive nav units stop working

 

OP,
I spent 20 years in the USMC as a nav on a KC-130. I was cel qualed in 1991 and I became an instructor at Randpolph AFB in the late '90's. Our curriculum was a pretty intense six month course, which was followed by another six months or so of training in a fleet replacement squadron before we became celestial qualified. I just took a look at the requirements for the rating and wow, they are pretty robust. I may have been able to pass the test back in the day, but now...not so much. We stopped teaching cel about 7-8 years ago. With that said, let me know if you have any specific questions. I may not remember off the top of my head, but I still have all of my reference books. I'm a bit of a nerd myself.

 

I was cell nav qualified in the AF. Flew across the pond many times with nothing but a sextant. Unfortunately I can't give you any information about how to get the qual.

I knew a guy who was an FAA certified navigator back in the 80's. I talked to him about getting my certification and came to the conclusion I didn't know enough about cell nav to get it.

 

@GunnerV or MD10- Two questions for you.

1) I found a Navigation manual from the Air Force. http://www.e-publishing.af.mil/share...FPAM11-216.pdf
Are they any other publications available for civilians?
I enrolled with Starpath School of Navigation Title Page. They are doing an excellent job. Well worth the money. I just need more aircraft applications.

2) I am trying to find a bubble sextant. Any idea where I can purchase a new one?

 

"Good on ya mate. Be a nerd ! " Some folks collect stamps, race sports cars and or match books from bars. Navigation today is all electronics. Few reading your post would have a basic understanding of grid or pressure pattern navigation. They are "lost arts". Wanting to learn them is a challenge.

I was a USAF Navigator until they discovered my parents were never married. They made me go to pilot training.

 

Suggest you find an A-14 sextant on Ebay. It comes in a box you can sit on in your back yard and shoot stars. The D-2 sextants requires a "mount" and are more difficult to use at home.

 

The pub we used was AFM 51-40 "Air Navigation", it appears that the pub you reference superseded it. I'm looking at a periscopic sextant that managed to find it's way to my house when I retired, but it wont do you much good without a sextant port.

 

Thanks guys!

 

In my prior life I was a nav then radar nav on the B-52. Years ago I heard from some of our new navs that the AF was no longer teaching celestial navigation. The requirement for keeping cel-nav current in the B-52 went away around 1991 or '92.

You could probably teach yourself how to do basic celestial navigation. You would need a current edition of the Air Almanac, and if I recall correctly three volumes of H.O. 249 (I think these are good no matter how old they are...one is just for using the sun for daylight cel nav, and the other two are for night cel nav). Must be a stack of thousands of these things in some DoD warehouse somewhere. Oh, then you'd want to have a bunch of blank pre-comp forms to do your math on.

As was previously mentioned, I don't know how you'd do it these days...the sextant the AF used was made to be inserted in a hole in the top of the aircraft (T-43, B-52, C-130, etc). I guess you could go old school with a non-electrical sextant.

 

IN USAF T-29 Navigator training the A-14 was hung from a hook in the glass dome. It had a bubble, cross hairs to center the "body" and a two minute averager. The sextants is easily (big black box) transportable and makes a great seat for shooting. Avoid A-10 sextants which have dry seals problems. Even though we have four GPSs on our boat, I continue to do celestial with a marine sextant (instantaneous shot) that has an artificial horizon attachment.