wrote:

How well do the vertical card compasses work and hold up in real world
conditions ( constantly circling, sticking etc) ?

Some of the GPS's have a compass display. Is that a viable alternative
to a vertical card compass (still having regular old style compass as
backup) ?

I would welcome replies from those with experience with either or
both.

Stan

Unless the GPS has a magnetic compass sensor, its compass display
gives you direction in which you are moving on the ground, not your
heading. This may or may not be desirable depending on what you want
to do with the information. If you want to get to destination based on
magnetic direction it is fine. If you want to compute winds it is
totally wrong. Converse is true if GPS has magnetic sensor and gives
you it's information. The only problem there is that so far I have not
seen one like that that I would trust.

Cheers,
Henryk Birecki