I know we have some good landnav guys here so I'm interested to hear what you think.

The iconic US military lensatic compass is made by Cammenga. I was visiting their site and found that they are offering a baseplate compass. It looks like they have transplanted the core of the lensatic model onto a plastic baseplate.

I like the selection of grid corners they've printed on the baseplate.



However a couple things seem problematic:

1) they retained the mils, and the degree markings are closer to the axis of the compass card than the mils, so you lose a fair amount of resolution if you want to read degrees instead of mils.

2) I don't see any type of meridian lines or a clear base to the capsule, so you lose one of the great features of any baseplate compass: easy use as a protractor. I know you can orient the map & compass to north then (somewhat) guesstimate the azimuth but still...

The pics aren't that great but as far as I can see, they made a hybrid model with no great improvement. You lose the fine sighting function of the lensatic in exchange for a baseplate model that doesn't offer the best feature of a baseplate compass. Am I missing something?

Wow! Another baseplate compass - as if we didn't have an adequate selection already. I agree with your comments about protractoruse, but for me, at least, it is fairly irrelevant, since I live in fairly "bumpy" and terrain orient my map using landscape features almost always. On land, I compass orient about every other decade.

Well, one of the chief benefits of a baseplate compass is that it eliminates the need to tote a separate protractor. But that function (essentially) requires a clear capsule with meridian lines to align with the map's north lines (of whichever flavor you prefer). So I just don't see the point of this new Cammenga unit.

Here's something else I noticed on the Cammenga site. If you look at the ordering options for the USGI lensatic compass, you have to select Northern or Southern hemisphere. I thought the USGI compass was specifically designed to be usable globally without concern with local magnetic inclination.

IIRC correctly, and I should, as I have the GI issue compass here at my desk, it is usable anywhere. The compass can be set to magnetic north by rotating the bezel the required number of degrees.

I have used mine mainly north of the equator, but the time or three I went south, it seemed to work fine.

You had me going for a minute there - I almost thought I found the holy grail of compasses.

I really love the liquid-free (and therefore bubble-free) inductively damped design of the mil-spec lensatic. The downside is the weigth and size of the bulletproof cast aluminum housing.

I think you hit the nail on the head. It's not a lensatic compass any more but it's still not a baseplate compass. It's a pocket compass with a straightedge on it.

I might consider buying one some day as a lighter weight alternative to my trusty lensatic.

Not Really. The US military has never been known for precision navigation, that's why GPS was invented!

I prefer this Compass;

http://www.recta.ch/en/ds-50g

Baseplate compasses are designed for speed and ease of use with grid co-ordinate map navigation, so the new Cammenga compass is not exactly an orienteering compass.

This Cammenga baseplate compass is a essentially a military compass hence the preference of the use of Mils rather than the poorer +-5 degrees scale. Even the Cammenga M-1950 sighting compass won't be any more accurate in use for navigation than the Recta DS-50G with its adjustable declination correction scale. i.e. it will improve accuracy and speed of navigation as you don't have to mentally add/subtract the magnetic declination angle to the measured azimuth/bearing assuming that the M-1950 users know of such things!

The Cammenga M-1950 will be tougher and can be used in tougher environments, but you probably wouldn't want to walking around in such weather though.

I take issue with that comment! Of all of the foreign military units I have worked with (including the best of the UK), there are few who teach land navigation the way the US military did. I have been retired for a while so I do not know how much of the training is done now, but special operations units still teach map and compass before using a GPS. In my experience, only the top special operations units were teaching that type of navigation at the lowest levels. Except the armed forces of Canada, New Zealand and Australia who all used to teach map and compass very rigorously down the the lowest squaddie.

I am just poking at you, I too know that most military units do not teach it extensively or well, in my opinion.

I do agree with the comment about not being able to use it on the map very well. It looks like they are trying to do too many things with it, and none of them very well. I generally carried a Silva Ranger while I was in the Army. The lensatic is bulky, heavier and slow. It is however durable and the mils are important, or at least used to be, when calling for fire. I don't know why they would include that on this compass. Maybe they had too many of those old parts left and are trying not to lose money.

LOL me too man. I like the ruggedness of the inductively damped USGI compass, and I understand declination well enough to get along without a mechanical adjustment for it. But like you so perfectly said:



Yup. I was so disappointed when I figured that out.



Same here, I use the Suunto M3G and MC2G. IIRC, Suunto makes the Recta. IMO you can't beat that global needle. The Recta is even better since it has the grid corners I use the most printed right on the baseplate. On my Suuntos I put a narrow strip of white vinyl electrical tape on the baseplate edges and marked it at 1:25,000 with an ultrafine Sharpie to make a grid corner tool. It's a little ghetto but I just can't bring myself to buy the Rectas just to get the convenience of the corner tools.

this is another new model from cammenga.

http://dealnews.com/Cammenga-Military-Lensatic-Compass-for-2-4-s-h/664104.html

You need to go easy on him, Montanero. Keep in mind that the Brits still haven't quite gotten over Yorktown.