On Dec 3, 9:12*pm, "Steve Lusardi" wrote:
Max,
Those compasses are not compasses. They are compass repeaters. The compass is elsewhere on the ship.Please reread my earlier
answer below. Another solution to the hand held swinging dilemma, might be to swing the compass positions where you would take
your sightings and simply create an offset table for each one. This too is common practice.
Steve


On a ship, the magnetic compass is usually directly atop monkey's
island. You can put a direction finder on its face and take magnetic
bearings. The only time I've ever needed to do this was when showing
an apprentice how it was done. In the wheelhouse and on the bridge
wings, they're all gimballed gyrocompass repeaters, of the stepping
kind.

I hadn't thought of creating a deviation table for likely positions of
use of the handheld compass. That's a great idea, and pretty much
solves my problem. I could just get a run-of-the-mill compass with a
hemispherical glass, and use a handheld (or compass-binoculars as
suggested elsewhere) for my magnetic bearings.

-m