where can I find a compass rose (small) to put on a wall map?

[michelle2016]

Hello, I am hoping someone can help me find where I can purchase some small (3-5" or so diameter), clear, compass roses - stickers or plastic sheets- to put on a paper map in a wildland fire dispatch center. The map hangs on the wall, and we put a compass rose with the center where the fire lookout is located. When the lookout sees a smoke report, they communicate an azimuth, and we use a string from center of compass rose to extend in the direction to know the smoke is along that path. Then a second lookout provides their azimuth and we can locate approximately where the fire is.

I need some of these compass roses, and can't find any online - I can only find big decals for wall deco. Plastic clear sheets would be ideal so they don't permanently stay on the paper wall map, but a clear sticker could work as well. Any help is appreciated!

thank you!

[J.Edward]

Hey Michelle,
These aren't stickers, but you could have either of them printed as stickers and use them for your wildfire maps.
If you absolutely need stickers, I can post them to my Red Bubble account and they could be made available as stickers, though the cost at Red Bubble would likely be higher than you'd want to spend - there base prices are a bit high.

[michelle2016]

I need a compass rose that has marks for each degree, 0-360, so you can find the correct azimuth. I will keep searching online or asking around, but thank you so much for the reply!

[waldronate]

a round protractor with a hole in the center and some double-sided tape might work. If you search google images for "round protractor printables" you will find many templates that you can print on overhead transparencies if you can't find the exact thing that you want. Or just on white paper if you don't mind a small exclusion zone under the protractor.

[Hai-Etlik]

Rather than trying to carefully align stickers on maps, what you really need is a pair of parallel rulers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_rulers

You can use them to 'walk' across a map while preserving a direction. Ideally you would have a compass rose printed into the map from the start so you know it is aligned exactly and then you can transfer bearings from it to the locations you need them with the rulers.

If you don't have an existing compass rose on the map, then getting a different map that does include them would be best, failing that, it would at least be easier to add just ONE sticker permanently. It's fairly simple to make a rose using a vector graphics editor like Inkscape, and then you can get printable clear sticker material or try going to a print shop.

You could also try doing this with software. A quick search showed that there's a triangulation plugin available for QGIS. It appears it was designed for tracking radio collars on animals over time, but it should be possible to make it work for your use case.