NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Compass Adjustment - A Cautionary tale
From: Kieran Kelly
Date: 2005 Jan 31, 20:06 +1100
From: Kieran Kelly
Date: 2005 Jan 31, 20:06 +1100
Greg Travillian wrote: Suunto is making several handheld compasses with a "global" needle. Evidently, they've come up with a design where the magnet and the needle are separate, so that the magnet can tilt while the needle lies flat. If you put "suunto" and "global" in Google, you can read all about them. Here is one of them: http://www.amronintl.com/tactical/products.cfm?id=1089 I checked this site and this appears to be an amazing development - a hand held compass that can be used anywhere in the world! Doesn't this spell the end of the "zoned compass" such as the classic Silva TD series of which I own one and which sparked this particular discussion? Why would anyone ever buy one like this again? Surely Silva will have to introduce a similar model or it will be out of business. Similarly, in one of the earlier posts it was mentioned that most of the cheaper hand held compasses produced by Silva and Suunto are zoned models incapable of adjustment. However, I also own an English Francis Barker, brass, military-style, prismatic compass, which is supposedly the best hand held compass in the world. With this type of oil filled compass the card swings against a stationary direction pin rather then a needle swinging against a stationary bezel. But it presumably has the same problem as the Suunto and Silva models i.e. it will only work in the southern hemisphere (or wherever the wholesaler is located). I tilted it slightly as a test and it becomes out of plumb and the card won't swing. There are no markings to indicate it is a southern hemisphere compass but when placed on a table the card is perfectly horizontal. So the days of this traditional and very reliable and accurate prismatic compass are also presumably numbered. Kieran Kelly Sydney Australia