Bagnold Sun Compass

There were and indeed are several patterns of sun compass, much the same in principle the British army used the - Cole's pattern and the Howard's sun compass, the latter model can be bought on ebay as surplus from the first gulf war. The Instructions on use are also on this sight - See Howard's Sun Compass.

 

Re; last second line; delete Sight, Insert Site!

 

The status of the project is slightly behind schedule. I hope to have the proofreading for the manuscript now within one week and that I can start the works for the layout soon. Some valuable information / confirmation about the use of the project was received from Jim Patch, former LRDG patrol navigator and a further photo showing the compass mounted on Bagnold’s Ford A was received by yesterday evening from the Royal Geographical Society. The booklet is well illustrated now.

 

After quite some struggeling wth the layout-software, the booklet is nearly completed now. The content became a bit more than expected in the beginnng and I guess that it should be published within a few weeks from now.

Looks like this:

 

So. Finally: All done and the first copy printed in my hands - I am entirely happy with the result.
...with the cooperation of the IWM and the RGS and the valuable information of three surviving LRDG navigators and the help of many others I managed to write a booklet about that important navigation-instrument. It took quite some time but now it is done:

 

Well done JUno - a labour of love it would appear...
Cheers

 

Well done that man! Presume it has to be manually adjusted throughout the day to account for the changing bearing of the sun; or did it have a mechanical clock built in to automatically compensate for this deviation?

Afterthought! Oh, that's what the knurled knob is for .......(deep blush)......

 

Manually, yes.

 

I note that some years later someone else did research into replicating the sun compass, but I don't know if their book is still available:

For Sale: Bagnold Sun Compass book - MLU FORUM

I'm not sure if Kuno still has any copies of his booklet? It seems to be very dear online so I suspect not