I just received the cheap mirror compass I plan to use this weekend to practice some land navigation on a trail in the mountains (dont worry, the trail is a documented hiking trail, I will simply try to use the opportunity to practice map & compass skills by trying to determine where I am based on features on my map and around me, I wont actually be navigating using skills I dont have yet), and after examining it and watching a bunch of instructional videos on youtube about the topic, I feel like the direction of travel arrow and index line (hard to see but its in the little magnifying bubble on the bottom of the bezel) are on the wrong side of the compass.
As you can see, if I want to use the mirror to sight a distant target, the bearing I will see from the index line will essentially be in the opposite direction since the magnifying bubble would be closer to my body in that scenario. There are some smaller green bearings on the ring which are the opposites of the actual bearing, but they are hard to read even when looking down on the compass straight on, let alone through the bubble which really distorts everything.
Here is the actual compass I ordered for better images.
Is it just a matter of lack of experience making me interpret this all wrong?
On the back of the compass should be a small screw you can adjust for magnetic
deviationdeclination.The lines and direction of travel should be adjustable based on your use case.
It’s been a little while since I had to use a navigation compass, but the above is the jist.
Yeap seems to be the case, apart from the adjustable declination. Mine is a really cheap one so it doesnt have that, but I can account for it manually in my head, its a good opportunity to practice mental arithmetic :P
Depends on where you are?
The lines should be adjustable, declination changes depending on where you’re at. Navigational maps should tell you what you need to set the magnetic declination to.
Yea, its adjustable and I have the declination on the map of the area I’ll be hiking at printed, but thats not what I mean exactly. This compass is cheap so it obviously doesnt have a declination adjusting screw or anything like that, so Ill be accounting for it manually each reading I take, but what I mean is, isnt the direction of travel arrow on the wrong side of the compass? Regardless of any declination, the magnetic reading I will read would be the reverse of where I want to go, no? Obviously its not shown in the image, but of course the mirror wouldnt be laid out flat like that, Id adjust it until I could see my target through the hole, and align the line-gap with the mounting point of the needle to the compass, and do everything else needed.
This image maybe shows what I mean better. If my target where I want to go is at the “top” of the image, and I am at the “bottom”, doesnt the index line and direction of travel arrows indicate the opposite direction after I sight the target, and account for declination manually if any.
You tilt the mirror to align the top of what you’re shooting to the bottom of the compass. When you look at the compass in the mirror, that arrow will be pointing up, towards the object you’re shooting. Watch this video and imagine the arrow on your compass.
Ok, that cleared up a lot of it. I guess I then turn the compass around to use the arrow, or simply flip the mirror flat and use its line as the “direction of travel”, but for the purposes of triangulating my position it seems I just need to do everything normally and then just read the green number instead of the black one, then account for declination and thats the bearing of the target to me.
Thanks for the vid :)
It’s been awhile since I’ve used mine, but I believe if you have a sighting mirror that is your direction of travel, where a compass without a mirror usually has a direction of travel so you’re pointing it in the same orientation each time.
This is mine and doesn’t have a travel arrow on it.
Yeap, seems I can just use the line on the mirror as my arrow, instead of using the one at the back of the baseplate :)
Don’t the lines move along when you turn the bezel?
They do, but those are either to align it with the grid north on a map or to cage the north needle when measuring a bearing, so not really useful to travel with I dont think so.
It’s been a long time, but I swear I remember something about this being right. Like you’re supposed to face backwards with direction of travel behind you with one of the mirror compass methods.
That sounds really difficult to do, and also very unsafe if youre walking backwards on a rocky mountain path xD /j
