Compassing 101
What Now?
By now should be pleased with your extraordinary compass abilities. You can follow bearings, or create your own. You can triangulate a position, and convert between degrees based on true north and those based on magnetic north. And you might even be able to find your way out of a forest without any compass at all!
Which is everything a letterboxer will probably ever need to know. But if you've decided that a compass is fun, there's still a lot more you can do with it. Using a map in conjunction with a compass opens up a whole new level of to your compass. Many of the markings on your compass—not discussed here since the focus was on the compass, not the map—are designed for map use. And reading a map is another level of skill completely.
There's an organized activity designed around the map and compass called orienteering where a map and compass enthusiast can race other map and compass enthusiasts around various terrain to find checkpoints, taking the compass to a competitive level. If that sounds interesting, you may want to check into it.
To learn more about the history of compasses, using your compass with a map, the sport of orienteering, or just about anything else relating to compasses, you might be interested in the book Be Expert with Map and Compass (very good, despite the strange, grammatically incorrect title) displayed to the left.
In this tutorial, however, you've learned the compass skills needed for letterboxing. Where you take it from here is up to you.
- Compassing 101 Intro
- Compasses & Terminology
- Following & Finding Bearings
- Triangulation
- Declination
- Improvised Compasses
- What Now?