Compas on Stem or otherwise?
 

Anyone seen this is use?

http://www.amazon.com/Stem-Captain-T...I34U1INUN71V6H

http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=300276

Seems there are several brands... starting at $18 up to $60

Curious as to how well it works...seems it would be sitting at an angle that would impair use?

Not only the angle, but steel parts or frames could adversly affect the accuracy.

One of the guys in the C&V forum had one on one of his bikes and it looked pretty sleek.

This^^.

If you absolutely need a compass I would suggest buying a nice hiker's compass of some type. It doesn't need to be all that fancy. Just stop the bike, haul the little beauty out and take a bearing or whatever. Keep it away from the steel bits and you'll be good to go. Al

One of my bike bells had a hemispherical compass on top so it was unaffected by mounting angle. Didn't work well on my Bike Friday with a steel stem, but was fine on my touring bike. I only bought it for the bell since my GPS shows my direction.

I mounted a small button compass on my stem- the steel bolts nearby made it pretty much useless.

Used to hang a safety clip ball compass off the front of my handlebar bag .. But

if you want more than a gimmick, take a compass and your paper map,
And walk well away from steel things..

so best is the one to put in the chart /map case..


Steel Ships have the Binnacle Kelvin/navigator's balls http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binnacle
to compensate for the ship around the compass..

I've tried a couple of handlebar-mounted compasses, but none of them worked that well, always being affected by things other than the earth's magnetic field. I now have a Garmin 800 which gives Heading as one of the data fields.

I agree. They even recommend a light belt buckle when you want to use a compass... So I think the bike and its metal parts will make the measurements too rough...

I had the same problem using a compass bell on my touring bike, aluminum stem but the steel bolts that held the handlebar to the stem caused excessive error on the compass. I suspect that the stem cap compass would have a problem with a steel steerer tube and the steel star nut.

If I was going to put any kind of "instrument" on a stem cap, it would be a thermometer. I toured with someone that had one and we often looked at it in the morning.

I have a thermo-compass zipper pull on the anorak front pocket zipper of the rain gear i wore, too.

grey an overcast looking for shadows for solar navigation, was not helpful .

I carried a beautiful compass on several long bicycle tours, and never used it. Now it stays at home. I get my bearings by consulting a good map, or asking people for directions.

I'm still here, which means I haven't gotten seriously lost yet!

I'd recommend this one which I find fairly accurate and reliable. Worn on the wrist it avoids the magnetic variation problem. I find it invaluable for navigating through French cities which tend to have dodgy signposting.

http://www.recta.ch/en/clipper

Forget the compass! Stash a 12V motorcycle battery in your bike bag and hook it up to a GPS unit, which can give you your speed, direction, compass orientation, elevation, map, and a host of other information, even where to go for supplies, food, etc. I have a Tom-Tom unit I'm putting on my bike when the weather warms up.

Having things that are less prone to failure isn't really a bad thing. Not sure why you'd run one of those either, when you could run something that uses smaller batteries and is much more rugged.


That said, I would just get a normal compass and clip it to something, then take it off if you need to get your bearings real quick. I've got a pocket transit that I used to use a lot when I did field work pretty often, now it mostly serves as a mirror when I shave etc. but it's nice to have the extra functionality.