r/searchandrescue • u/Money-Violinist9176 • 23d ago

Geiserailie Compass Reviews?

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I’m the director of a brand new search & rescue team with very minimal funding. As much as I would love to purchase Silva compasses for all my volunteers, there’s no way we can swing it just yet. Putting on an orienteering class at the end of the month. I’ve seen these all over Amazon and Temu. Any experience with these cheap alternatives? This will be ideally just for class and not for wilderness rescue.

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u/New-Instance9196 23d ago

I know nothing about these ones, but the mirror is quite important in my experience. Also, all cheep compasses I have used kinda suck.

Ps if there's no declanation adjustment they are basically useless.

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u/Hidesuru 23d ago

I got by with a compass with no mirror for many many miles of hiking as a lad in the old boy scouts. Works fine. Mirror makes it easier to get better precision, but it's not exactly critical.

Just my two cents though.

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u/[deleted] 23d ago

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u/Hidesuru 22d ago

Appreciate you throwing out even one alternative though. Reading through here before I was left thinking "surely there's now than one single beans of good compass out there these days" lol. But I honestly wasn't sure who either.

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u/lukipedia EMT-B / WFR / SARTECH III 23d ago

 Ps if there's no declanation adjustment they are basically useless

That’s a little extreme. You can always +/- your declination manually. That’s tougher for beginners, but not impossible.

But any durable compass with a good bearing will have declination adjustment, too, so in that sense I agree with you in that declination adjustment is a good indicator of overall quality.