Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 113 total)
  • Can you use a compass?
  • nickc
    Full Member

    Had a boggo Sliva delivered to work to replace the one I’ve inexplicably lost from my pack. Was astounded to learn from my immediate colleagues and then from the folk who sit near me that not one of them knew how to take a bearing on a map and navigate to where you want to go using the direction of travel arrow.

    Bad news…Holy shitty bloody nora, this is pretty basic stuff…

    Good news…Toni (executive sec) thinks I’m some sort of cross between bear grills and and grizzly adams…How you doin’…?

    jambalaya
    Free Member

    Yes

    Can’t Flikr bb code but a photo if anyone is bored enough to click

    Be Prepared

    woody2000
    Full Member

    Nope, not a clue.

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    Murray
    Full Member

    Yes, I draw really good circles 🙂

    freeagent
    Free Member

    Yes. But then I’ve been involved with Scouts on/off since I was 8 (now 44) and have done a few trip/expeditions where it has been vital.

    My 10 year old daughter can set a map using a compass and work out where she should be going.

    surfer
    Free Member

    Yes pretty well actually 🙂

    My 10 year old daughter can set a map using a compass and work out where she should be going.

    My daughter is older but when she did her DOE she said she was the only one who could read a map and use a compass!

    convert
    Full Member

    Well yes. But I’m into all that shizzle.

    Using a compass is not on a school curriculum so if you were not in the scouts or did DofE and your folks were not into the whole great outdoors thing there’s a fair chance folk would not have to touch one ever especially in the smartphone/gps era of ‘navigationlite’.

    donald
    Free Member

    Yes (I was a munroist)

    stevextc
    Free Member

    I find some stuff people don’t know really weird…
    It makes me wonder what other kids did in their childhood….

    I find people that don’t know stuff like chips come from potatoes etc. the most baffling… it’s like eating something but not knowing what it is?

    iainc
    Full Member

    Hope so, got my MBLA assessment in a fortnight …. 🙂

    whitestone
    Free Member

    Yes. Learning how to read maps and use a compass was part of Geography when I were a lad.

    craigxxl
    Free Member

    Quite easily but the real skill is in reading the map so you avoid wasting time and energy or worse still getting yourself in a dangerous position.

    tuskaloosa
    Free Member

    yeah but can you drink your own urine, eat the heart of dead animals, wrestle an alligator, leap across molten lava…. 🙂

    eyestwice
    Free Member

    Yes.

    I find it mind-boggling that so many of the outdoor-types that I meet have no clue whatsoever.

    4130s0ul
    Free Member

    Yes. I can also do the things Tuskaloosa listed above*

    *This may or may not be entirely true

    surfer
    Free Member

    The trick is reading it at speed. I struggle with this but more of an eyesight issue than technical skills 🙁

    molgrips
    Free Member

    I can, but I can easily understand why people don’t. Not really a useful skill if you aren’t into outdoor pursuits is it? And you know, not everyone is – shocking, I know.

    nickc
    Full Member

    I understand that Molgrips, but a compass? it’s like being able to use a biro, surely?

    mattsccm
    Free Member

    Yes. Part of O level geography plus its so ridiculously easy that surely anyone can work it out.

    rocketman
    Free Member

    Obv

    Did the entire S. Cluanie ridge in a cloud base of 500 ft 😐

    Spin
    Free Member

    Using a compass is not on a school curriculum

    I teach it and lots of others do too but it’s actually a fairly niche thing and it’s forgotten pretty quickly without repeated practice.

    Spin
    Free Member

    it’s like being able to use a biro, surely?

    Nope. What % of the population do you think regularly need to use a compass? Why would they bother their arses learning?

    nickc
    Full Member

    You could work it out, though right? some of my colleagues couldn’t even orient themselves to point North using the bloody thing. (one of them managed to work it out in the end TBF to him)

    slowoldman
    Full Member

    Yes but then I can also read maps and use a slide rule and log tables.

    Spin
    Free Member

    You could work it out, though right?

    To take and follow a bearing in poor visibility (which is pretty much the only real use for a compass)? No chance someone could work that out and barring zombie apocalypse why would they ever need to?

    stever
    Free Member

    I’ve run the nav leg of the British Fell Relays several times …still done dumb things & thinking of going on a course to get better tho 🙂

    gobuchul
    Free Member

    Only 4 of us in the office this afternoon.

    Just did a quick poll and 75% of us can.

    johndoh
    Free Member

    Yes, I draw really good circles

    That would be a pair of compasses 😉

    (Unless the compass is circular and you are drawing around it) 😉

    woody2000
    Full Member

    Just did a quick poll too, 0 people in this office of 8 can use a compass.

    CraigW
    Free Member

    I’ve done a bit of orienteering over the years, so handy to know how to use a compass. Can be fun trying to follow a bearing while running through a forest.
    Also can be useful to find the way off a mountain summit in thick fog.

    kimbers
    Full Member

    yes

    cub, scout, venture scout etc

    johndoh
    Free Member

    But back to the OP – I don’t see why anyone should be ‘astonished’ that someone else can’t do what they can do. I am sure other people have skills the OP doesn’t have.

    And no, I cannot use a compass. I tried and failed miserably at trying to understand it so gave up seeing as I really don’t have a need to be able to use one as I only ever really ride trail centres but 99.9% of my riding is now on road and I never go walking / orienteering other than clear signposted family walks.

    ajf
    Free Member

    I find it mind-boggling that so many of the outdoor-types that I meet have no clue whatsoever.

    +1 to this.

    I have done a fair bit of navigation based races so pretty handy with a map and compass.

    It still to this day baffles me how people are prepared to go out and about in the hills not knowing the basics of navigation.

    I understand your average Joe or Jo not knowing as its pretty niche nowadays but mountain bikers and fell runners and walkers there really is no excuse. It seems that its a common thing.

    JonEdwards
    Free Member

    I know the theory, have one on me (along with a map) if I’m in the mountains, but it’s rare I need to get it out, so my practical skills are probably average.

    I’m generally of the opinion that if I need a compass I’ve already made a hash of things that I could probably have avoided if I had read the map more carefully.

    globalti
    Free Member

    It’s easy once you grasp that the baseplate rotates around the compass to read off the direction.

    The only time I ever used mine while cycling was on Polaris in the North York moors when we arrived at a crossroads in forestry on a dull day and had absolutely no idea at all which way to turn. Sort of like Tom Hanks at the end of Cast Away.

    perchypanther
    Free Member

    Lost in the fog up a mountain?

    Simply stream a quick YouTube video tutorial on the use of a map and compass and you’ll soon be on your way to safety…..

    nickc
    Full Member

    johndoh, yep, sorry guilty as charged, a little hyperbole never hurt anyone. Some of my friends had never held one, didn’t know what it did etc etc, I supposed I’m so used to them that I don’t give it a moments thought that I could (if needed) find my way off a hillside if the weather came in, but yes you’re right, if you’ve no intention of being there in the first place, why would you bother.

    iainc
    Full Member

    using the compass is one thing, being out in the hills and knowing where you are on a map, to within, say 100m, without the aid of GPS, is something quite different.

    stevextc
    Free Member

    I can, but I can easily understand why people don’t. Not really a useful skill if you aren’t into outdoor pursuits is it? And you know, not everyone is – shocking, I know.

    By itself no but being able to take a bearing is just part of map reading.

    Somewhat independently its also useful to set up an arial or satellite dish

    Combined with map-reading having a sense of the direction you are travelling helps know if you are turning left or right… etc.

    Not long ago I had to go to a visa place in London with my boss to get some business visa’s. I looked at the route on my phone, memorised it and set off… it was bloody cold and he kept stopping to take his gloves off and look at the phone.He kept following me then stopping to check … and we had an appointment time… so I convinced him to just trust me to get us there without GPS…. we had a single corner and 2 street to go before he doubted me… so I told him.. we go to the next corner, cross the first street and its before the second on the right…

    We got there and he thought this was a god like gift…. I think he thought I’d wrestle polar bears in St Petersburg if we met any…

    When we got to St Petersburg we had a late flight back on Saturday so we wandered round a few sights. Again I just looked at a map and have a little compass on my rucksack .company phone has no data…so GPS isn’t an option. Its pretty much navigate between dome, palace, bridge… and again he ascribed god like powers to this basic map reading… (My memory is very good for maps and I had an advantage being able to read the signs he couldn’t but still it was just basicmap reading and GPSless navigation)

    Aristotle
    Free Member

    Use of a compass and navigating/sense of direction/way finding is one of those “Life skills” that people in the past often just did that is being/has been lost due to the advance and availability of technology.

    If you don’t ‘exercise’ the brain with such activities, the skills are lost.

    I very rarely use a gps for way-finding, but then I enjoy the process of either “following my nose” or looking at a route in advance, picking out a few way-points and then setting off there by whatever mode of transport.

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