as cool as that sounds [no really, i'd love to try to do it], i think i'll stick with a cell phone:
i just got a new one, and it's a flip phone. i found out that the antenna unscrews, and with that off it fits in one of the same small otter boxes that my PSK is in [of course, i went out and bought another for it that same hour].
yeah, yeah, i know gsm cell phones won't work in a life raft in the middle of the atlantic, but hey at least I thought it was cool <img src="images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Ken's on Route 9 (next to Borders) was where my wife and I went for our anniversery dinners. My MBTA stop was Newtonville, on the Framingham Line.

Like we was practically neighbors. <img src="images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

.....CLIFF

wow, that is dash dot dash dot, dash dash dash, dash dash dash, dot dash dot dot <img src="images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />
i can't imagine why you'd want to leave this lovely temperate zone (why, just today i got to run in a freezing rain ice storm) <img src="images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

The only reasonable effect that a magnet could have on a compass is to strengthen the magnetization of the compass making it respond more strongly - faster. This will not deminish the accuracy at all. Only if you were to force the needle of the compass out of alignment with the magnet and then move it about as was suggested in another post. Fortunately for you compass the needle will align itself with the magnet so it can only be strengthened. Further the needle is a permanent magnet as, presumably, is this other hypothetical magnet. Permanent is permanent. The only things that scatter the magnetic alignment of a permanent magnet are things that will disrupt the crystaline alignment of the metal itself - Extreme heat or impact. in the presence of these influences it is possible to reverse the magnetic alignment of the magnet or eliminate it. completely. But then again yyou are not likely to be throwing you PSK in the fire and then expecting it to continue to be useful are you.

We moved back to Louisiana because:

1) Hunting dinner in the back yard gets you in trouble. (They don't even HAVE a squirrel season in Newton. Who knew?)

2) We had enough of Howie Carr. Or was that Mike Barnicle?

3) Running in a freezing rain ice storm got boring. Running in a sweltering tropical sauna is thrill-a-minute excitement.

Honestly though, we do miss Boston. You live near Natick Labs?

.....CLIFF

"USC claiming to be the National Champion is like Al Gore claiming to be President."
- LSU Chancellor Marc Emmert

omigod

I know from personal experience that is possible to reverse the polarity on a compass needle, so that the "North" end points SOUTH.

Some years back, while playing with a magnet & my old Boy Scout version Silva Explorer compass (non-liquid filled), I managed to stroke the magnet down the long axis of the needle, which, as noted elsewhere, will magnetize an item. It reversed the polarity of the needle. After an "Ooops!", followed by a couple of minutes of "Gee, did that really happen?", I repeated the process & returned the polarity to normal.

Could this happen "in real life", i.e., in the field? Possibly--if the magnet happened to be beneath the compass, & the compass was moved by sliding off of the magnet, rather than picking straight up.

If 'twere me, I'd leave the magnet at home, or at least, not have it near the compass.

David

any season is squirrel season hehehe
i can imagine the high-heat running is quite adventurous (i nearly died of heat exhaustion when i was on vacation in the caribbean and just set out to do 60 minutes <img src="images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> )
yes indeed, Natick Labs is not more than half a mile from my house.

i've got to go with Tom and minime on this one. the compass is going to orient itself pointing towards the magnet and will therefore not have any tendency to be demagnetized (i.e. magnetized wrong). i have good sources, as my father is a physics teacher. also, if somehow the magnet were swiped across the needle while the needle was held in a fixed position and this were enough to magnetize it with the opposite polarity, it would, as David said, be off by exactly 180 degrees. i think if i get that reliant on the compass, to the point where i can't tell the difference between north and south, there's not much hope for me anyways, compass or not <img src="images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />

About the only time I ever actually absolutely needed a compass was when there was no way to determine North from South. White out conditions on Mt Rainier. It was hard to determine up from down let alone North from South. Any reason at all to not trust a compass is reason enough to not carry it in my view. I do not think the magnet will likely change the compass polarity though.