I just got out and dusted off my copy of FM21... the big book, not the feild guide, and reread (acutally more like studied, memorized and practiced) chapter 18. There's actually a bunch of pretty effective methods for determining direction that I had forgotten and/or overlooked in the past. If you can see the stars (or even just the moon) at night or have enough sunlight to cast a decent shadow during the day the only real disadvantage to these methods compared to a small button compass is that a couple of them require time (no more than 20mins for all but one method) to aquire a decent heading. Thanks for inspiring me to do the research. I feel much less dependant on my compass now that I am armed with this knowledge.
Edited by brian (11/22/04 05:39 PM)
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Learn to improvise everything.