Those of you who’ve read my posts for awhile now may have picked up on the fact that I’m not a big fan of technological gizmos that you take into the great outdoors. I’ve been in situations, both in the military and in civilian life, where technology failed and it took skill and knowledge in manual systems in order to overcome the problem.
A compass is a prime example of something everybody should have in their BOB, hiking pack, or hanging from their necklace. And yes, you should know how to use it! Brunton was kind enough to send me this compass awhile ago and I managed to put it to use on my winter hiking trip.
Like most of you I’ve tried a whole bunch of different compasses in the field. It got to the point where it didn’t really matter what I used, although I did start out with a lensatic compass and protractor while in the military.
This is their Adventure Racing Model and I’ve got to say that I really like it. You can read what they have to say about it at the site, but here’s why I enjoyed using it:
First of all, it’s got a nice smooth action to it. The azimuth wheel is tight, so you don’t have to worry about it slipping a couple of degrees when using it and the baseplate is nice and thick giving you something non-flimsy to hold on to.
Another thing I like about this compass is the ability to set the declination constant on the compass and not have to worry about LARS (left add right subtract), which is a great feature! As you can see in the picture below I flipped the compass over and set the declination to 18 degrees west. No more Left Add Right Subtract when using this compass.
I’ve always used lensatic compasses that needed to have the declination done mathematically, so using this was a real treat.
In the picture above you can see the various features of the compass. If you click the image you should get a bigger view of it. (Incidentally, my winter camp was set up right around 1 3/4 inches on the bottom scale.)
Not quite trusting the declination scale at first I figured out my bearing the old fashioned way, by adding 18 degrees to the compass after I had the grid bearing. I took a couple of bearings like that noting where the compass pointed, then set the declination scale and tried it that way and voila! It worked!
The only downside I could see about this was the compass sensitivity. The needle itself is a fairly powerful magnet and it was easily pulled off course by small amounts of metal. If you’re aware of that fact it’s not a big deal.
If you don’t have any knowledge about how to use a map and compass don’t despair! I am currently working on putting something together for those unfamiliar with them. If you know how to use a GPS, but can’t take a bearing using a compass you might want to tune in when I finally finish the post.
-Jarhead Survivor
BTW: Have you ever relied on a piece of technology only to have it fail at the worst possible moment? Tell me about in the comments section below. I’m not a Luddite, but I do like hearing how people overcome adversity using a little Yankee ingenuity.
Or conversely, is there one piece of technology you wouldn’t be caught dead in the field without? Let me know!
21 comments
That looks similar to the compass I used to have before I dropped it off a cliff lol. I knew where I was so it didn’t cause any problems.
My big SHTF moments always end up being related to flashlights. Me and two friends went caving in a difficult cave when we were younger and inexperienced. We ended up falling a lot and destroyed all the cheap flashlights we had about 1/2 mile into the cave. We had to make our way back out using a military surplus light stick that managed to survive the ordeal. If the light stick failed, we would have ended up either 1) staying put (with no food and water – stupid) waiting for rescue or 2) attempt to follow the draft (probably getting killed in the process).
Nice stuff. I have concerns over use of a compass right now and in the near future. With the poles shifting the magnatism is also shifting and until the movement stops(actually slows, it really never stops) we will not be able to adjust for truly accurate readings. I have a very nice sunnto that I found in a surplus store new, still in teh pkg, all papers etc and got it for $20!! what a steal! I also have a silva map type nav compass from wally world. In one bag I also have a mil-issue engineers type compass. As you can see, I am all about redundancy……
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Good Article on the Compass. Just for a laugh I got out my campass the other day and I think Spook45 is right. I noticed a minute deviance in magnetic north. I used to own a company installing satellite dish’s. I am pretty good at noticing when compass readings change. So we still may need to adjust a degree or so until this moving around stops.
Hey Guys – I’ve been reading a lot about how magnetic north has been moving lately – even accelerating a little if half of what I read is correct – and that means that the 18 degrees I used in the post was incorrect. I always check http://www.magnetic-declination.com/ for the current magnetic declination and it’s actually closer to 16 degrees here in Maine, which is what I use. I used 18 in the post because that’s the number on the map and I didn’t want to confuse people who may not understand the declination constant.
You can still use your compass, just make sure that you know what the current DC is before heading out and you should be fairly accurate out there.
Happy trails!
In 2003 I was the LT’s driver in a Direct Support (DS) Military Police Platoon with 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division. This also meant I was the RTO (basically meaning I listened to the radio a lot) for the Plt. We were in the area of Karbala (south of Baghdad) when we captured some EPWs who surrendered to us. http://www.flickr.com/photos/40068942@N06/
Because of the nature of our mission, we could only hold EPWs for about 24rs (preferably less). Our protocol, which we had done about twice already, was to call for transportation from the rear to pick these guys up and take them south. This particular time our transportation was somehow given bad coordinates, and they couldn’t find us. There was a little bit of small arms fighting going on about 400 yards away. Far enough away that we didn’t have to worry about getting hit. But we were also taking sporadic mortar fire, which, again, we weren’t TOO terribly concerned about because… well, Iraqi’s suck at fighting. Anyway, Brigade radioed us for an updated position. The LT was elsewhere doing his thing, so it fell on me to talk w/ Brigade.
They just wanted an updated position, and the sooner they got it, the sooner our relief would get there, and the sooner we could move and not be one of those very few times where an Iraqi got lucky and actually hit their intended target w/ a mortar. Well, our GPS was down, which was rare. Obviously, we had maps, but I hadn’t used a compass and protractor in over a year. Shame on us. I didn’t even have a protractor. I had to eyeball it the best I could within a 100 yds. They did eventually find us.
Good work on getting them to find you!
I was a mortar platoon FDC chief for awhile and once on a training exercise ALL of our ballistics computers went down. We’d been in the field a few weeks and there were no extra batteries anywhere and all the batteries in the battalion died! I’d always been big on the plotting board, map and compass, protractors, etc. I whipped out my plotting board and – admittedly – it took awhile to figure it all out manually because it had been a long time since I’d used it. But I did figure it out. I wound up doing fire missions for all the guns in the Bn, which meant we didn’t have to pack up any unused ammo, which as you know is a huge PITA! My commander loved me and after that I could do no wrong. :-) That incident reinforced the fact that electronics fail at the most inopportune time and if you have your back up systems in place you can still overcome most obstacles. Not to mention you look like a freakin’ genius to your superiors.
True, but its going to change and fluctuatue thru 2012 when the pole shift iis complete. It will also likley be complicated by the planetary alignment that will occur at the same time. After that set of changes takes place annd settles then we will be able to go back to the same old system of adjustment for Declination and compensate for the difference between true North and Magnetice North. I have seen a few posts from people(mostly in mountainous areas which likley hv large iron deposits etc) of thier compasses either spinning wildly or just in state of constant flux that will not stabalize and point. The latter being the most common. Hoping I wont hv to travel on foot far enough to worry about it, I know my local area well enough to wing and dead reckon anywhere I want to go.
I heard the magnetic pole was heading for Russia!
I doubt that any planetary influence would cause problems with the magnetic pole as I believe they’re too far away to affect us.
I’ve also heard of areas where compasses don’t work, but have never seen one myself. That would be something to see though!
As far as navigating if TSHTF I could get home without a compass if I had to, but it’s always nice to have that little bit of security even they are a few points off!
Even if the poles shift, the sun will rise in the East and set in the West, so we can find our way. A working compass would be a lot better though. :)
One more quick story, I’ve been working as a police officer since 2005 in a certain medium sized city in MD. (I won’t name it because I’m about to slightly criticize it). When the network goes down in dispatch and they have to resort to the white board for keeping track of us, it’s as if the world is ending. What in the world did they do before Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD)? Seriously, it’s been extremely comical the 2 times I’ve experienced it. If an EMP were to affect the DC area, we’d be totally screwed. I don’t think the new, Federally imposed “Incident Command System” is going to help. Chickens without heads.
I’m looking forward to the map reading post. It’s definitely a perishable skill, and I haven’t done any “real” land nav using a map since I got out of the Army in 03.
Ok I lied, but this IS the last story, I promise.
I’ve done a little amateur adventure race in Chambersburg, PA (put on by the YMCA) twice now. Part of the race was to row our 4 man raft to various points on a huge lake using a compass. Well, the guy who placed the boeys (I know I spelled that wrong) used a GPS, not a compass, so everything was off +/- 10 meters, which pretty much screwed everybody. We found them, but not because we could shoot an azimuth, but because the boeys stood out enough for us to see.
Technology FAIL.
When I was a kid we lived in Panama (for the most part it SUCKED, but there were some cool things that I got to do), I was in Boy Scouts and we went into the Darien for an exploration hike/camping trip. The Darien is a pretty imposing stretch of rain forest and swamp, some of the most deadly animals in Central America are found there. This is the kind of place where it seems like anything and everything is against you, it is for the most part unexplored and civilization is rare. As I recall (this was back in 1988) there were 12 scouts of various ages and 6 Scout leaders, including my father and myself. We had several compasses that just would not give us a decent bearing in a very dense area located at the top of a hill. I still don’t know why our compasses wouldn’t work in that area, but we ended up having to camp overnight and use “dead reckoning” to get to an area where our compasses would work. This was in the time before cell phones were common, and they probably wouldn’t have worked anyway, we had a couple hand-held radios (old mil-surp) that refused to work in the area around that hill as well. It was kinda scary being a kid in this imposing jungle when the adults in charge seemed to have no clue as to what was going on with the gear we were relying on.
In more recent years, I have camped out beside a small waterfall in Shenandoah National Park where my compass needle would just continuously spin. Not a huge problem out there, since most of the trails are well marked and there is usually other folks not far away. I have backpacked through the park many times since I was a teenager and can usually get by just using landmarks that I know, but I could imagine this being a very confusing situation for an inexperienced hiker.
@Spook45- Redundancy is ALWAYS a good thing when talking gear that can “save your skin”!
What happened to your compasses was most likely caused by massive amounts of iron ore in the mountain you were standing on.
I used a GPS for the first and last time on a trip to Vermont a few years ago. We had just left the Island, and are coming up on a series of interchanges (only in Quebec are to parallel highways bisected at 90 degrees by a third parallel highway). Right as the first of several off ramps loomed, the GPS goes “lost satellite connection”. Never used that dumb chunk of silicon again…
I learned map reading in highschool. We had a lad nav trip. They dropped us off in a wildlife reserve and said. figure out where you are, and go to this point grab a tag and then go to this point, which was our base camp of sorts. Get there before lunch, no tag, no food (mmmm MREs).
Lived in OK at the time. one guy in my group got a hold of the map and the compass and got us lost (he took off in a random direction). We ended up behind our spotters/people that are supposed to keeps from getting lost. Then is started snowing in freaking OK. Needless to say he got the crap beat out of him later. That was also the trip where I also almost fell down a crevice/between two giant boulders where god knows what was living (thinks snakes). Fun times.
we did land nav yesterday in ROTC as well. I kept rolling my eyes. After 5 years and like 7-10 times covering it, you get really bored. But I did get to try out a military compass this time, it was wierd. I need some more practice with it. Is there a good place to get maps? I’ve never seen any of the maps except in class. I’d like to have one or two of my area.
@Ray – great stories! Imagine a hospital or other technology dependent place suddenly losing their computers for a few days. I’ve seen it happen and it’s a nightmare. Nurses and doctors who at first yelled about how they hated the computers now yelling that they need to have them back up and online in order to do their jobs.
@Chefbear – that must have been something down in the jungle with the adults scratching their heads and going wtf? Sounds like everybody kept their heads and came out of it ok though.
@Chris – if you’re going into the military – especially as an officer – one of the best things you can know is how to read a map and use a compass. I saw many 2nd lieutenants embarassed by their superiors and those under them because they missed a turn or couldn’t find something. If you go into any kind of combat arms this is going to be a critical skill. Trust me on this! Good luck!
Not a bad idea. No experience at all with the above, only with the standard military (genuine, not built to spec.) compass, it works well. Our problem down here is not having much elevation to check your bearings, you better be DARN sure your heading is correct. So a backup to make sure your primary is working is a good idea.
Without landmarks, keeping headed in right direction is critical. So important, having a compass in your EDC kit could be of great benefit. I gritted my teeth and purchased a Francis Barker SAS compass. Extremely compact little guy, it will at least keep you pointed in general direction if reduced to not having a larger compass. Here is a link to the compass – you might be able to find it less expensive elsewhere.
http://tinyurl.com/45fo996
I have owned 2 of these. The print always wears off the back quickly. If not for that I’d probably still be using this model.
While I do alwayscarry a compas while in the woods, I most often navigate using landmarks if I ever stray from the trail. I have even referred to marking blazes on trees that I pas, so I can find my wayback out. This leads me to my piece of technology that I find most important. That would be a medium length, fixed blade knife. It is large enough to cut branches and saplings for shelter and fire, yet not so large that it can’t be used for skinning squirrels ( or anything larger for that matter).
Would love to have this kind of compas. I have use compas but it is only given to me by my uncle sort of second hand. But it still working. What else could I possibly use for my AR?
That was pretty cool compass, very useful for adventure race. That will give us more attractions and eager to play better in the race.