Knowing the magnetic declination of your area is important. For the Adirondacks, it is 14-degrees West (disregarding minutes and seconds, since they are pretty much useless for land navigation). As a rule of thumb, for every degree you are off, you are separated from your destination by ~92 ft. So for the Adirondacks, if you didnt take into account the 14dW mag decl, you would be away from your destination by almost a quarter of a mile. Such discrepancy can matter considerably if bushwhacking is involved. You can save yourself some math-headaches by getting a base plate compass with declination adjustment. Ive used both in the field, and Ive found such a compass to be well worth spending a little extra money for. To find the declination for an area, check out NOAAs calculator: ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag-web/#declination
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 17:40:34 +0000
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