FWIW, I agree with u on the Grundig. They sell them here at Radioshack, Brookstone and the Discovery Channel Store. They do not seem to me to be very rugged.

I really am interested in of those Freeplay radios that you can get throug the C Crane Company. They resell several mdels that look nice. Does anyone know any stores that carry the Freeplay? I'd like to see one before I purchase. Also, i'm guessing the cost through cCrane is high, because they want 69.95 for the Eton FR300 (which I believe is the same as the Grundig that most places sell for $30 - $40 USD).

I did pick up a small hand crank radio (AM-FM-Weather) at Walgreens for about $12 IIRC. For that price I thought it was worth it, and it seems to work fine, though I'm sure its durability is questionable.

And as far as the original post, I do carry a comapss (Silva clear base I've had since cub scout days) and a Garmin ETrex Legend C in my vehicle BOB.

Michael

A 25,000 scale map just makes it more in line with the metric system, where 4 cm equals 1 kilometer (distance between UTM gridlines). Why do you think it is so hard to learn?

Well, I guess learning the new map wasn't exactly what I meant. I agree the metric system is far superior to what we all learned but I have a hard time adapting to it. Especially in the tool department. I was raised on a 9/16, not a 10mm so I have a bias toward metrics. In addition, I have a forty year collection of 1:24000 maps not to mention that my UTM grid overlay would not work on a 1:25000 I don't guess. Bottom line, I am just too old and stubborn to change in this instance. <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

KyBooneFan,

I don’t disagree on using a GPS when you are hiking, backpacking, or hunting off trail. Like you, I set a waypoint on my car. Then I look at my compass and see what direction I am walking. I agree that you can get back to your car a lot faster with a GPS. I imagine it has saved a lot of people from being lost. I know I took a wrong turn in my SUV and had to use my GPS to figure out how to get back on the correct dirt road. I also keep my GPS on while deer hunting and treat it like life itself. When using a compass to get back to your car you have to set a bearing that you know will take you beyond your car so you will know what direction to walk, on the road, toward your car.

I meant to say that for any of the day hikes I have taken it has not been useful. On the other hand, when I hike in the Superstition Mountains again I will take my GPS. It is easy to get lost on the trails. My son got lost, in there, when he was hiking with the troop. He lost sight of the other scouts and took a wrong turn.

Ah yes! The Superstition Mountains! How lucky you are to live in that part of the country. In West Kentucky the difference between a ridge and a hollow is six inches. Have you managed to find the old Dutchman's gold? Ha.

Seriously, I believe that one reason some folks don't warm up to owning a GPS is that they are just technically challenged. I have a hunting buddy that just had to have one so his wife bought him one identical to mine at the time, a Lowrance GlobalNav212.
After he got it, I offered more than once to help him understand it as it was identical to mine. He kept putting it off and never asked for help. That was several years ago and to this day, we never mention it anymore. His wife fusses at me because he won't use it so I am between the rock and the hard place. BTW, he makes living as a professional electrician. <img src="/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

The stars, moon and Sun ain't worth a tinkers dam for navigation if you can't see them. Chance sez you are gonna get lost when it is overcast and/or you're in the middle of a forest and can't see the night sky. Even the best compass for survival work is a hand grenade accuracy, so finding north quickly (even magnetic north) and a couple landmarks and you can pretty much orienteer your way to safety.

The best navigation skills I could recommend to anyone is learn the law of sines. You can get yourself out of a lot of bad situations just by being able to triangulate your location. Of course, having a laminated piece of paper with the sine table on it beats having to memorize it. <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Benjammin, I have read and re-read your post and I'm sorry to say I just don't follow your thinking. If it is dark in the big woods and you can't see the night sky, how are you going to find a "couple of landmarks" to triangulate? I must confess I never hard of the "law of sines" and after a brief tutorial:

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/LawofSines.html

I don't think I would be any better off knowing it. While you are figuring out angles of a triangle and fussing with pencil and paper, I am going to the truck. My GPS with illuminated screen says my truck is 0.8 miles on a bearing of 285 degrees and there is a dotted line from where I am standing straight to the truck. I now consult my compass, find 285 degrees, pocket the GPS and strike out trying to generally stay on 285 degrees. Periodically, I will consult the GPS to see if I am generally on course and I will be waiting for you at the truck with a thermos of hot coffee. Essentially, what I have described is comparable to an airplane flying directly to a homing radio beacon. Now how can you argue with that?

Do I detect a bias against the Global Positioning System which after all, was designed for military navigation? I can't imagine navigating in the deserts of Iraq or anywhere else without it. A compass in that scenario would, at best, just tell you where North is. And with that knowledge in thousands of acres of sand and no landmarks, are you any better off? I think not. Unless of course there is a "sine" that says "Baghdad 397 kilometers". <img src="/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />

Well, it is only dark maybe half of the time (unless you are way north, in which case a compass may be problematic even then), but it can be overcast without breaks for days on end, at least where I am from. What I was talking about is if you don't have a compass, you have other limitations about orienteering. Eventually (I would hope anyways) you will get daylight enough to make out landmarks. When that happens, you can then use the compass to get some sort of relative idea where you are to where the landmarks are. I may not be able to measure feet or yards exactly, but more or less my pace is the same in the woods, or wherever. So I can tell how many paces I am away from something by taking a few quick bearings and doing the sine calcs using the angles. It is not a difficult or time consuming thing, and if you can't get to the GPS for some reason, or worse still it won't work, you can still come up with a good estimate of where you are and which way to go. Now this assumes you have id'd your landmarks relative to some previously known location, so that the information you develop using the law of sines has some use, otherwise the only thing you will find out is how much further you are lost from where you started being lost.

My chem teacher always counseled that, while technology makes our life more comfortable, it is also a trap. Being able to solve the problem using just your mental skills and a few rudimentary tools, well, isn't that the essence of survival?

Now, the nice thing about deserts is that you seldom have cloud cover continuously. In this case, a sextant and a compass would get you out of trouble, again using a few rudimentary tools and a little education, still without relying on much technology. In that respect, finding my way through the desert may be even easier than in the forests back home. Ah, there is a time and place for everything isn't there.

Now, if I go to the trouble of learning how to make good use of all that knowledge, guess what. Yep, the first thing I will reach for in my survival bag of goodies for navigation will always be my GPS, a brunton in this case, complete with built in maps. Ain't technology simply marvelous?

One of the first things I figured out as an electronics technician was how to build a crystal radio. Sure is nice not to have to rely on a power source. Really, I am not biased against GPS, I think it is a great new tool for us to enjoy, but it is not free, and it does rely on ideal conditions for operation, and it is not easily replicatible should the technology fail us. More than one time I've seen hunters and hikers slapping the side of their Magellan staring at an "acquiring signal" screen prompt walking down some path.

I mean, come on, there certainly was no GPS system 500 years ago, and definitely no landmarks out in the ocean, when people were really just starting to explore the world. We have to be at least a little more intelligent than that by now, don't we? One thing is to make use of new technologies, while still mastering the tried and true.

Why do you have a thermometer on your compass? What am I missing through not having one?

Don't GPS units often have difficulty aquiring the sats in heavily wooded areas?