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Posted by copey [206.80.245.5] on Sunday, October 04, 2009 at 05:03:41 :
Thursday I heard some one up at 2 in the morning , it was my youngest son . He said he could not sleep , he was worrying about a course was taking on orienteering ,map reading . This kid is sharp and nobody’s fool but he was stumped on how a compass worked , he could operate a gps spin on a computer like no tomorrow , I guess you could say he is a “tecky” . So now that I was a wake I started to explain the principle of a compass and how it works . After three hours of patiently try to explain that the red needle points north and you turn the compass so the red needle covers the shaded area at the bottom of the compass ,then it says clearly on the compass on the rotating base “take bearing readings here “ and there is a little arrow that you would place on a map or a simple site to look through to see so you could take a sighting to see a visible land mark . It is that simple, fool proof and very reliable .Well I figured it out ,that was the problem it was too simple ,you didn’t need to put batteries in it , program it , set it to your time zone ,no flashing little lights and no digital read outs no LED screens and that’s what was missing . When the sun came up I took him outside to the back field and proved my point it worked that easy and he caught on right away after a couple attempts. Now I told him as we bounced back home in the power wagon . I could have bought any new truck I wanted but I bought this truck simple primitive tough and reliable and no on board computers just plain old simple straight forward truck . He got the point ! ~ Copey
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