Compass Recommendations

Robert and Dean. Amateurs.
I navigate by looking at moss on trees when i'm in a suitable area. It grows on the north side of trees in the Northern Hemisphere. Reverse in the South.
I'm real SUL as i save the weight of a needle and a watch.(I tell the time by the sun or stars.) :)
Silva are the kings.

My stepdad wrote a book on traditional navigation techniques for sailors called "The Barefoot Navigator"

http://www.jack-lagan.com/About%20BN.htm

Dean,
If I understand your qeustion correctly, to get a back azimuth, I line un the south end of the needle to the north end of the capsule lines instead of lining up the north end of the needle to the north end of the capsule lines as I would to get an azimuth.
I'm not clear on your point about putting a piece of paper under the compass.
Anyway, I'm not actually looking for a compass. I'm just curious how people use the 2 K&R compasses mentioned above. I went on a "perfect" compass search a while back and concluded that to get all of the features that you mentioned, you have to settle with the "heavy" Suunto MC-2. If I'm really trying to cut ounces, I sacrifice the sighting feature and carry a simple baseplate compass that has adj. dec.

Bill,

Hmm. Ok, here is what I mean:

Say you want to shoot a back azimuth from a mountain peak, to verify your position. You sight the peak on your compass and it is at 300-degrees from grid north. To draw the line upon which you must be standing on your map, you draw a line projecting at 120-degrees from the mountain peak on your map.

How do you do that using the lines under a compass capsule? When using a protractor the military way that I'm used to it is trivial exercise.

I certainly do understand the big benefit to those capsule lines. To whit: it is much more quick/easy/accurate to find the azimuth of a line that you have drawn on the map, for instance to find out what heading to take to follow a proposed path that you have drawn on the map. You just lay the compass with it's base edge on one of the N-S grid lines and slide it and twist the capsule until one of the capsule lines is parallel to the route line you drew on the map. Voila.

The MC-2 isn't exactly perfect. It only has 2-degree gradations, and a simple sighting mechanism. It is nonetheless VERY good, but if I can find my "perfect" compass for less weight, I'm very interested.

I guess if K&R would make a Dakar with a needle instead of a card so that you could have capsule lines, and with a mirror on the inside of the lid, it would be "perfect." But I tend use a protractor rather than capsule lines, so it may be "perfect" enough for me. The Dakar and my protractor together still saves me 0.74 ounces over the MC-2 alone, on my scale, if I can trust the claimed 1.8 ounces for the Dakar.

Actually, that's a rather pitiful gain, isn't it? But I would sacrifice the capsule lines (which I don't use) in favor of lensatic functionality (with which I am very familiar) in addition to the weight savings.

Hmm. Still conflicted.

Dean,
With a baseplate compass, you don’t have to think about back bearings. For simplicity sake let’s assume that you are at 0 deg. declination. Standing at an unknown position, aim the arrow on your baseplate at a known position and rotate the capsule until the north end of the needle is centered in the arrow on the bottom of the capsule (the “red is in the shed”). Then without adjusting anything on the compass, put the compass on the map with one edge of the baseplate on the known position and rotate the baseplate around the known position until the n/s lines on the bottom of the capsule line up with the n/s lines on your map. Your position is somewhere on the line of the baseplate edge that is touching the known position.
The only reason that I can think of for needing to calculate a back bearing is if someone is on the known position and you want to tell them what bearing to follow to get to your position.

Huh.

Neat trick.

I guess that's why everyone says to try to learn different ways of doing things. BY FAR most of my map reading has been done in the line of duty, using the "official" military equipment, including a protractor and a huge, clunky lensatic compass in its metal housing (i.e. no baseplate). So, it has always just been more comfortable for me to keep doing it that way.

I keep going through the K&R, Brunton, and Suunto websites looking for my perfect compass, but it is eluding me. If any of several models included a lensatic arm, any of them would be perfect. But, heck, my MC-2 doesn't have one, and it works great. Looking REALLY HARD at the photo of the Dakar one sees that the compass card is skeletonized and is see-through enough that it COULD have capsule lines, if the company wanted to include them. Frustrating. I may just have to accept that I won't find a perfect one.

> Say you want to shoot a back azimuth from a mountain peak, to verify your position. You sight the peak on your compass and it is at 300-degrees from grid north. To draw the line upon which you must be standing on your map, you draw a line projecting at 120-degrees from the mountain peak on your map.

Draw lines on the map? My maps would end up illegible!

I use my compass to align my map with magnetic north.
Then I sight over the map and compare the surroundings with the map. So far it has worked just fine, in some of the most difficult country.

More to the point, I track where I am all the time, using the map and a memory of the map and key navigation checkpoints. "Navcomp is running."

Roger,

I suspect that most of us navigate by orienting the map to the land and then maintaining good map contact, but triangulating is still a good skill to have. More than that, it's just plain fun!

Gotta concur with Bill, Roger. I have admitted that I use terrain association 99% of the time. I just like to play around with the map and compass a bit.

Not to mention, if you ever find yourself hiking in a reasonably featureless area, like a desert, you will need different map skills.

Raj,

Regarding the Brunton 54LU, I just realized that no-one has answered you. As someone who is looking for advice myself I may not be the most authoritative person to ask, but…

The Brunton website has some conflicting data: it cites 1-degree graduations, but says 2-degree resolution, with 0.5-degree accuracy. What the heck ?!?

It has the capsule lines. But it is a baseplate compass, and thus lacks a mirror, which makes taking bearings easier. The sighting mechanism looks primitive, which is pretty much standard for baseplate compasses. (That said, many people use baseplate compasses- there is no practical reason that a hiker needs the accuracy that I want, I just like it.)

I guess it looks like a pretty solid baseplate compass, if that's what you want.

The Brunton 54 LU is a prismatic sighting compass with full base plate features. In addition, it is luminous, for use at night. I have used a lot of compasses including the Silva Ranger and the 54LU is far superior to them all. It is also a bargin, as comparable British prismatics from SIRS Navigation and Pyser-SGI will set you back $400-$500

Accuracy and quickness of use are why prismatic compasses are used by the military.

Ed

Raj & Dean

The Brunton 54LU uses 2 compass scales. The one on the outside of the capsule has 2 deg markings. If you use the compass like a standard baseplate compass you get the same accuracy as any baseplate compass with 2 deg markings.

The compass can also be used as a sighting compass by looking through a small magnifying lens in the side of the capsule. The lens magnifies the compass card inside the capsule. The card has 1 deg. markings, but because the markings are magnified, you can easily see the space between each degree marking (theoretically giving you ½ deg. accuracy). Because of the sighting mechanism, you don’t need a mirror. This mechanism has been used in the boating industry for a long time in a popular hand bearing compass nicknamed the hockey puck. They are extremely accurate.

Go here for a good photo of the 54LU sighting mechanism: http://www.thecompassstore.com/54lu.html

Unlike the K&R Alpin Pro, the compass card on the 54LU is clear so you can see the map through the baseplate.

I have 2 complaints with the 54LU. First, in order to keep the compass card from dragging on the capsule, you have to be careful to hold the compass level. This is difficult when using it in sighting mode. One way around this is to shake the compass a bit before taking your final reading. I think that the compass is very accurate, it but it made me nervous to see the card hang up occasionally. Secondly, the 54LU does not have adj. declination.

I use my compass (a tiny, magnetized needle) and micro Kevlar@ thread to sew clothing from leaves, if conditions require clothing. In the evening, I sew a shelter from leaves, sort of a gorilla nest. For food I eat grasshoppers, black beetles, ants and house flies, uncooked but with a little Tabasco sauce, my luxury item. When other hikers see me coming they flee like wind-blown “chaff,” which is where I should have put this post, or forgot the whole thing.

Bill
Thanks so much for your detailed description of the 54LU. I was a sailor long before becoming a hiker, so I know what you mean about using it as an accurate sighting compass. Matter of fact, I'm still trying to pry myself away from Lat/Long references and doing circular trig!

I have one more question about the 54LU, before adding it to my gear inventory :-)
Does it have a declination screw adjustment to permanently adjust for the local declination?

Now that I'm home from work, I checked on the Brunton 54LU and found that is does not have a declination adjustment screw. Drat! It seems these compass manufacturers create the perfect compass in the lab, then remove one key element or another to create the models that are actually sold. But nobody gets to play with the "perfect" compass except the lab rats.

Anyway, after Bill's recommendation and my familiarity with that type of sighting compass, plus finding a deal for $63 including shipping, I surcombed to temptation. I think I'm going to be really happy with it. BTW, there is a review of it on Backpackgeartest.org

Michael,

Let us know your impressions of the compass!

Just received the compass today. I am extremely pleased with my first impressions. Generally speaking, it's a pretty standard transparent card compass with many usefull map scales:
1:25,000
1:50,000
1:63,360
mm scale and inch scale

It has magnifying lens, three "sticky" spots on the bottom to keep the compass from sliding across your map.

Here is the separator though; sighting through this compass is so easy. It is an absolute pleasure to use this way. The marking are extremely easy to read. You read both the ahead bearing (in larger font) and the back bearing (in smaller font) simultaneously.

The only additional item I could think of for this compass is to add a declination adjustment, but life's not perfect.

All my other compasses are now put away, this is my "go to" instrument.

Dean- did you ever get the K&R Dakar? If so, what are your impressions.
Being similarly afflicted with military navigation training, I am having a hard time giving up the lensatic compass and protractor, but this one looks like a good compromise.

Thanks,
Tim