Timex Digital Compass Watch

[bone-collector]

thought I would share my opinion :

I received one the other day as a gift from a good friend , being sceptical about anything digital and especially things that do more than 1 job I decided to play around with it , after reading the easy to follow instructions and setting the declanation for my area to it I took it outside with my garmin GPS , well low and behold its within +/- 5 degrees of the garmin , pretty dam good for a watch I thought , after using it for a couple of days I also relised that the big indeglow button on the face was a great option as well as you can push it with even gloves on , I looked them up online and they run about $40 USD at cabellas and bass pro in the states , small price for a great tool IMHO

I give the timex expadition digital compass watch 2 thumbs up , and would recomend it to anyone thas in need of a new watch or looking for a digital compass

[YukonJack]

+/- 5 Degrees?...wouldn't that be compounded in off-course distance the farther you use it? Say you'd be heading north for a couple miles, to get to a particular spot. When you travel that distance, an error of 5 degrees would put off your expected destination point by a considerable amount. I wouldn't loose the Garmin......or the real back-up compass, Bones!

[bone-collector]

no it dosnt seem to , if its off 5degrees and the garmen is only within 10-15 meters under cloud there identical , if the course is already 5 degrees off it will read as 5 degrees off the whole time, , it would make map reading a bit of a pain but for finding your way back to the truck its just fine, tested it out yesterday over a mile hike in cricles with the gps and came out right were I went into the timber.

edited to add:

if you read the instructions even for a 700 dollar gps there still out "X" amounts or only accurate to "X" distance , the +/- is a given varient to let you know it could be out that much , and dosnt mean it isunder good conditions , 1 would be worse off with a old fashioned compass with no declanation settings than with any electronics thats for sure , especially if traveling from say vancouver to dease lake hunting were there is a 5-6 degree declanation change