I did that - magnetized needle - as a Scout and it worked well enough to remember. I recall a few more details to make it work well. Can't hurt to pre-magentize the needles, as you suggest. Also, in a pinch, a magent is not required in order to magenitze a needle enough to respond to the earth's magnetic field.<br><br>There are other expedient methods for determining direction and it's prudent to learn some of them as well. I've found that I'm almost hard-wired for the Northern Hemisphere, though - I have to stop and think about what I'm doing for expedient direction sensing in the Southern Hemisphere, where as it's pretty instinctive for me in the Northern half of the world. Depends on where one spends most of their time, I suppose.