I started O when only Base Plates existed and made a half hearted attempt to try a Thumb Compass. My forest technique relies on running on the needle, with the occasional bearing ideally set on the run- sometimes with hindsight not often enough!
Firstly, has anyone an idea of the split between users these days? Secondly, do some people change between them depending on the terrain/course type?
I read logs on Attackpoint from thumb compass users about "getting their heads up", a problem most people experience whatever compass they use. In my experience trying to take in both direction and map information together from the map and compass hand meant I spent much longer glued to the map, with my head looking downward too. Where as in separate hands I might be referring to them more often but my attention is more on the terrain. Perhaps this is do with multi-tasking on map reading, direction and terrain information, and you can't readily do all three together. Any thoughts? Any tips for a base plate user about improving their thumb compass use?
Base Plate vs. Thumb Compass
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Re: Base Plate vs. Thumb Compass
My personal view is that you (almost) always want the map and compass in the same hand. How else do you know that the map is correctly oriented.
When I was learning to orienteer (a long, long time ago) I started with map in one hand and compass in the other, but swapping to both in the same hand significantly reduced my misdirectional wanders as every time I looked at the map I expected the needle to point to N on the map, and if it didn't I knew to stop and consider.
Again a personal preference, but I like a compass with a rotatable bezel so that I can take a bearing in advance of when I need it. You can get both baseplate and thumb compasses that allow this.
I usually use a thumb compass, but don't worry if I have to use a baseplate.
When I was learning to orienteer (a long, long time ago) I started with map in one hand and compass in the other, but swapping to both in the same hand significantly reduced my misdirectional wanders as every time I looked at the map I expected the needle to point to N on the map, and if it didn't I knew to stop and consider.
Again a personal preference, but I like a compass with a rotatable bezel so that I can take a bearing in advance of when I need it. You can get both baseplate and thumb compasses that allow this.
I usually use a thumb compass, but don't worry if I have to use a baseplate.
- DaveR
- red
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Re: Base Plate vs. Thumb Compass
DaveR wrote:My personal view is that you (almost) always want the map and compass in the same hand. How else do you know that the map is correctly oriented.
I usually use a thumb compass, but don't worry if I have to use a baseplate.
Thanks, yes orientation is the weakness of using a base plate especially at night when you can't focus on feaures ahead. Maybe I need to experiment more in training and see at the very least whether a thumb compass works better for me at night and become ambi-compass.
- maprun
- diehard
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