The Helikon-Tex Scout Compass is a classic cartographic compass.
Made from 100% polypropylene the compass is nice and clear offering easy readability of your map through the compass base plate.
Speaking of the base place, the compass measures 6cm wide by 13cm long with a 4.5cm wide needle housing.
I personally use OS Explorer maps which are 1:25000 scale so having a 1:25000 scale was important which this has. In fact, it has a 1:50000 scale as well. I have found not every compass has both of these scales so this one is ideal in all situations.
The needle housing has an outer black bezel with black writing which is fixed in place and does not rotate. The inner dial which does rotate is orange with black writing and declination marks. I really like the black and orange combination and makes the dial nice and easy to read.
The dial also includes some glow in the dark points, two larger marks for North and a dot for East, South and West. There is also a point on the end of the North needle. The lume here could be brighter and doesn’t last too long, but a quick flash with your touch soon brightens them back up so it’s not a big issue.
Another couple of features of this compass include a standard 120mm ruler a magnifying lense built into the baseplace and an orange lanyard.
Final thoughts, for a relatively simple item this compass comes with all the features you need, it’s well built, and an important piece of kit. Having both map scales is a real plus as there are plenty of compasses out there that lack one or the other. The orange dial is a nice unique touch which makes it stand out. The needle is accurate and not much more to say other than it points North! The lanyard string is a bit thin but identical to every other compass lanyard out there, I will be changing it out for some paracord as the lanyard hole in the compass is large enough.
I purchased this compass from Military1st for £6.95 in early 2020.
0 Comments