Baritone???
Basically tuned like a standard guitar, but down a 4th to B (so tuned, low to high: B E A D F# B). Though many tune them lower. I’ll probably keep mine in Bb, as all my guitars are in Eb.
It has thicker strings and a longer scale length to compensate. Sits between a standard guitar and bass, kinda.
3 Likes
Oh yes, sorry. That’s an excited yelp, not a question! Haha been eyeing up a Rivolta Baritone for a while.
2 Likes
I spy a Sterling engine too!
5 Likes
That was my 21st birthday present from my parents, in lieu of a fancy watch 
(Please excuse the state of my desk - I was a student…)
7 Likes
Nice! The joints on mine are little plastic tubes, which are a bit fragile. Yours looks more sturdy.
4 Likes
I had to rescue it from my workplace a couple months into working from home - they started clearing down desks and it ended up in a box with my strandbeest. That’s the only time I’ve been into work since March.
4 Likes
We just got something new in at the office: a real live Norden bombsight. I’m geeking out about it right now! 
10 Likes
That is cool!
1 Like
To google…
23m wow that is damn impressive. I know it‘a wrong but I want to take it to bits.
1 Like
That’s the first time I’ve seen a picture of one of those. That’s really cool.
1 Like
I’m still in love with the Fire Control Table on HMS Belfast. Several tons, I believe, of electromechanical goodness.
9 Likes
Does the fire go out of control if the fire control table breaks?
Yes, but not the way you implied. If you’re lucky the individual turrets have Fire Control Clocks which can also be used for gun-laying.
@Boydesian, did you get the stabilizer with the gyroscope too, or just the sighthead?
2 Likes
I educated myself after the poor joke I made, being not particularly interested in military stuff it’s interesting to see analogue computers.
1 Like
Yeah, I read a good bit about them when I was working on GURPS High-Tech: Electricity and Electronics. I was able to put in stats for a general purpose one, based on a commercial model that was on the market around 1960. You can see a lot of images at the Analog Museum Web site (Analog Computer Museum - Impressions of Analog Computers). MIT has some pictures of the differential analyzer that Vannevar Bush constructed there in the 1930s, which was an electromechanical system (Vannevar Bush's Differential Analyzer); apparently Claude Shannon was hire to operate it. They’re really amazing devices, and I rather wonder what the world might be like had digital devices not replaced them.
This is the bombsight “football” only. The sight gyro is in the spherical housing, but this would’ve been attached to the blocky Stabilizer assembly which controlled the autopilot. Awhile back we had an X-1 Collimator for the Norden which was basically a separate reflector sight that the bombardier could use to make general course correction until he needed to use the optical sight for finer control and adjustment.
1 Like
