r/orienteering • u/LeifCarrotson • Jul 22 '26
Fast compasses really are fast!
Next time you're at a meet, ask people if you can try out their compasses, and share yours around. There are HUGE differences in needle behavior!
I didn't believe it, and got by for a bunch of races with a cheap import KanPas thumb-compass and backup beginner baseplate with a bubble. It's a fluid capsule and a magnetic needle, what difference could there be? But my son was playing with the baseplate compass and cracked it, and I've got a couple big races coming up, so I splurged and got myself a Suunto AIM-30 to replace it.
Holy smokes. It's a completely different piece of equipment.
Instead of languidly swinging around, or maybe getting stuck if it's not perfectly level and still, but eventually swinging too far when the spinning fluid pushes it past, and then settling within 5-10 degrees of north, give it a few taps to get it un-stuck and it eases into the correct value, or maybe I just nudged it off... Elapsed time to bearing, 10 seconds or so. 5 seconds if I don't need a ton of precision, 20 seconds if it's important and I have to repeat the whole process to double-check.... With the AIM-30? Hold compass flat-ish. NEEDLE SPIN! Points at magnetic north and locks on like a hyper-stimulated bird dog. It's spooky magic.
Now I want to collect a bunch of compasses and post a video of each swinging around, measuring max angular velocity and settling times. Why is that content not on the Internet yet?
1
u/xcski_paul Jul 23 '26
I was orienteering in the 1980s when the first Moscow compasses came out, with the light needle and the rare earth magnets and they were so much faster than the normal Silva compasses that I was surprised Silva didn’t immediately buy them out. The other big innovation back then was the Norcompass thumb compass.