A decent handlebar mounted compass?

[Mike Sales]

In Donington, about 4 miles SSW from my present E.P., there is a statue of Flinders and his cat. As well as inventing his Bars, he circumnavigated and charted the coast of Australia, with his cat. He was raised in Donington.
I spent a few childhood years within sight of his eponymous island, in the Bass Strait. Bass was from Boston, half a dozen miles ENE from here.
Joseph Bank's home was at Revesby, just up the road.

[st599_uk]

Flinders was a midshipman under Bligh, who had in turn sailed with Cook. Most of the exploring officers of the time had a link with Cook. Another, Vancouver, charted the West Coast of America and Canada. His charts were a bit off, but about 10 years ago they found an error in the nautical almanac he'd had on board, recalculated all his sights and redrew the charts, all now accurate to within a few metres.

If you want to accurately work out your compass direction without getting the compass swinger to swing your bike, a wristwatch with analogue face will do.

[Carlton green]

Flinders was a midshipman under Bligh, who had in turn sailed with Cook. Most of the exploring officers of the time had a link with Cook. Another, Vancouver, charted the West Coast of America and Canada. His charts were a bit off, but about 10 years ago they found an error in the nautical almanac he'd had on board, recalculated all his sights and redrew the charts, all now accurate to within a few metres.

If you want to accurately work out your compass direction without getting the compass swinger to swing your bike, a wristwatch with analogue face will do.

That’s an interesting insight into history, thank you.

Please would you explain how the wristwatch and compass works, and does the wristwatch need to be metal? (my analogue face wrist watch is nearly all plastic - as an aside that watch is an inexpensive Casio, I’ve had it for a few years and am delighted with it).

[Mike Sales]

A story about Vancouver which I enjoy.
When Cook reached his furthest south, 71 10, and was about to tack northwards, Vancouver climbed to the end of the bowsprit, so that he could be the man who reached the furthest south.

[Galactic]

Please would you explain how the wristwatch and compass works, and does the wristwatch need to be metal? (my analogue face wrist watch is nearly all plastic - as an aside that watch is an inexpensive Casio, I’ve had it for a few years and am delighted with it).

Point the hour hand at the sun. Halfway between the hour hand and 12-o'clock is south. No need for a metal watch, or even an analogue one, as long as you can imagine where the hour hand would be if you had one on your digital watch.

As has been discussed, a compass on handlebars will never be particularly accurate, but I wouldn't be without my compass-cum-bell. Both components, compass and bell, are cheap rubbish (£6) and have functioned accordingly, if consistently, for over 10 years. Only once was it not good enough to help with my map-reading - at a junction both forks ran closely together and neither were on my paper map.

I'm pretty sure the cheapo compass on my bell is as accurate as doing the halfway-between-sun-and-12 thing, then add (or is it subtract?) for daylight saving and the earth's current magnetic deviation at your latitude etc.

[Jdsk]

Please would you explain how the wristwatch and compass works, and does the wristwatch need to be metal? (my analogue face wrist watch is nearly all plastic - as an aside that watch is an inexpensive Casio, I’ve had it for a few years and am delighted with it).

Point the hour hand at the sun. Halfway between the hour hand and 12-o'clock is south. No need for a metal watch, or even an analogue one, as long as you can imagine where the hour hand would be if you had one on your digital watch.
...

That's the way to do it.

Except that the watch face needs to be horizontal.

And it's halfway between local noon and the sun rather than 12-o'clock. Time zones, summer time...

And in the southern hemisphere this gives North.

And, as you say, an imaginary watch works fine, although that can take a bit of practice.

Jonathan

[Carlton green]

Please would you explain how the wristwatch and compass works, and does the wristwatch need to be metal? (my analogue face wrist watch is nearly all plastic - as an aside that watch is an inexpensive Casio, I’ve had it for a few years and am delighted with it).

Point the hour hand at the sun. Halfway between the hour hand and 12-o'clock is south. No need for a metal watch, or even an analogue one, as long as you can imagine where the hour hand would be if you had one on your digital watch.
...

That's the way to do it.

Except that the watch face needs to be horizontal.

And it's halfway between local noon and the sun rather than 12-o'clock. Time zones, summer time...

And in the southern hemisphere this gives North.

And, as you say, an imaginary watch works fine, although that can take a bit of practice.

Jonathan

Thank you both.

I’d misunderstand the earlier comment by st599_uk and hence the question. Using an analogue watch set to GMT or Winter time (rather than BST) and the sun is a well know trick. Of course you do have to be able to discern the sun so there are times when only a working compass will do.

In British summer time the clocks are one hour ahead of GMT (noon or mid-day is then at one o’clock) so, mentally at least, the watch needs to be reset to an hour earlier to give GMT. Local variance of solar time to GMT is then ignored as the direction of North is estimated.

[deeferdonk]

not strictly a compass but i like the concept of the compass mode on the beeline bike computer. It points in the direction of your destination, rather than north, and lets you work out you own route as you go. Also has the more conventiional route mode. Not used it myself though

https://support.beeline.co/en/articles/ ... mpass-mode

[Grldtnr]

An even simpler way I'd use the Sun, in the northern hemisphere, at noon the shadows point south, vicea versa in the Southern hemisphere, but yo do need to know which side of the equator.
It could be the other way round, twe sticks and a time period, then half the angle from the stick and Shadow, not accurate but it's a start!

To getting totally lost !

[SimonCelsa]

An even simpler way I'd use the Sun, in the northern hemisphere, at noon the shadows point south............................

Are you sure?

I would say the sun is due South of you at local noon in the UK, hence any shadow cast should be oriented North, Shirley!

[simonhill]

The Tropics!

Depends on summer or winter and if you are in the tropics or outside them.

In Northern hemisphere outside the tropics, the sun is always to the south. In the topics it can be to the north of you in the summer.

[Cowsham]

I've learnt to use the sun

What sun ? I live in NI so won't work here most of the time.

[Cowsham]

Not all smartphones have an inbuilt compass. (check your specs). The ones that do can use the apps. The others use GPS to get compass directions which isn't actually a compass and can suffer usual GPS problems

I think???

Glad I saw this post -- checked my Samsung and found it has it's own built in compass. Not only that it has a spirit level and a ruler all in the edge panel you swipe out from the right side of screen.

I couldn't find it at first and thought it just contained shortcuts to recently used apps and was a bit of a nuisance so I'd turned it off a while ago.

A bit of Googlin I found you enable the "tools" via the settings but all I could find was how to switch on and off the edge panel.

More Googlin found a guy showing the settings -- you swipe out the edge panel and the settings are to the bottom left but appear floating almost transparent on the main screen beside the edge panel. I missed it the first times I looked for it.

You can have several different types of edge panel and have them appear via an extra swipe in sequence. I've found the tools and the phones clip board very useful. You can have messages apps weather etc but I just picked two.

The custom one might be handy. There's 9 categories to choose from.

[simonineaston]

I've learnt to use the sun

What sun ? I live in NI so won't work here most of the time.

Fair point! Who remembers shoes marketed at keen scout types, with gullible parents, that had a tiny little and fairly useless compass under a flap of insole? Clarks Trekkers, or some such...?

[Carlton green]

I've learnt to use the sun

What sun ? I live in NI so won't work here most of the time.

Fair point! Who remembers shoes marketed at keen scout types, with gullible parents, that had a tiny little and fairly useless compass under a flap of insole? Clarks Trekkers, or some such...?

Clarks Wayfinders, as a lad I had a pair and thought them grand but they were likely dear and I likely trashed them in the ways that active little lads did and still do.

That the Sun don’t always shine is true but trees tend to grow towards the south - or rather sun- , etc. It’s interesting to note that once you’ve pasted the tropic line all bets are off, never considered that before and never expect to go so far away from Blighty.

Is Northern Ireland really the land of near continual cloud and rain?