How to Use a Compass

If we got a map and a compass in the hills it is very easy to use these tools to navigate really easily across the hill side. But, we have to first note how to set a compass to the right bearing, so that's what we are going to do now. So, if we are on Fairfield and we want to get to Great Rigg, we take our compass and we place the baseplate along the route where we are to where we want to go. So, here if we want to Great Rigg so you place the side of the compass along that line.

Then what we need to do is rotate the compass housing. If we turn this round there are lines on the inside of the house and you can see turning, we align these up with the North and South grid lines on the map. Now we have set the compass, but we need to also now find magnetic variation. So, now we need to add on approximately two degrees which is about one knot and that gives us an accurate reading now and we can just take the compass, rotate it so that the magnetic needle is pointing to the North on the compass that means our route in this direction. So we will simply walk off in this direction and we will get to Great Rigg.

See you then up again.


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