A compass is a must-have item for any trip, whether you’re off to hike across a mountain range or just taking a trail down to a local river.
Before the age of GPS the compass was the only handheld device that could tell you where to go, and unlike a GPS device, your compass will never run out of battery, it’ll never stop working because it got soaked in the rain, and if you happen to suffer the inconvenience of being in the vicinity of a nuclear blast, your compass won’t stop working because of the EMP.
Other than just knowing which way is north, a compass can also be used to orient your map correctly – very important if you’re in an area with low visibility, or without any major landmarks to assist you.
With a little practice you can also pinpoint your location on a map using triangulation, by taking two bearing measurements of known landmarks like a mountain or river bend, then drawing lines on the map from the bearings till they intersect – this will be your approximate location.
The Kasper & Richter Meridian Professional Sighting Compass is a high-end unit designed for use by military personnel, professional guides, and park rangers. It has an aluminium alloy body with a fluid-filled thermo-elastic capsule for durable bubble-free performance, and on the underside you’ll find a 1/4 inch thread for tripod attachment.
On the left side there’s a flip-out clinometer, there’s a sighting lens at the 6 o’clock position (with diopter adjustment), and a flip-up clear lid with sighting line. For night use it has a luminescent bezel and north points, and on the face it has a metal bezel with 0-360 Azimuth scale (5 degree resolution).
Each compass is made in Germany by Kasper & Richter, a company that has been making precision instruments since 1920.
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Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
