How good is your sense of direction?

Mine is good, do not know why, perhaps it is from growing up and playing in the bush all the time? Don't get me wrong in flat wooded country on an overcast day it can be confusing but it seems my inner compass is normally correct.

Some folks do not have a very good sense of direction, I was hunting with a guy and we decided to head back to the truck, I turned around and headed off in the direction I figured we should go, he pulled out his GPS and told me that I was going the wrong way and I should swing about 90 degrees. I said nope, if you want to go that way go ahead but I am going back to the truck. He was more nervous about being alone than going in the wrong direction, turned out I was right and he never has really trusted his GPS again.

How about you?

Here is a story about a kid who knew how to find his GPS co-ordinates from his phone and text them to his folks.

Times they are changing.

KTK

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-s...oods-1.3917013

 

Mine is normally pretty good too. Like yourself, spent much of my youth in t'country.

 

I don't want to take away from this story; but, If you have cell service you aren't lost.

 

I was moose hunting a couple of years ago up around Fraser Lake which is about 500 miles north of Vancouver. One of the guys pulled out his phone and got a google earth view of where we were, trees, creeks, roads, skidder trailers, ponds etc.

You could figure out where you thought they were and how they would move. Not every where has that sort of coverage.



KTK

 

Pretty good despite the fact I'm a city kid and I didn't spend much time in the nature unfortunately.

 

Mine is excellent. I'm a country boy . I am used to drive without a GPS and use the landscape like back in the day. I can also use the sun and the stars and much more . I'd be pretty good to survive in a Zombie world.

 

I also grew up in a city, but then its just another kind of jungle isn't it, though with more foot friendly terrain. As with others with the ability to see the sun I could get myself back to a area I knew, and then home.

 

Well, they could use me to calibrate compasses.

 

If you go to Alaska (or anywhere in the far north), in the summer, your natural sense of direction (most of which comes from the sun) will short circuit. The sun revolves around the sky rather than crossing east to west. Even there though, you pick up other cues over time. In normal weather you have a steady wind direction to use (if you take note of it). The old "more moss on the north side of a tree" trick really works and the further north you go, the more obvious that becomes. In most areas you can pick one highest peak, note it and use that as your constant landmark. Even with all that, I carried a compass and would check it if any doubts arose. The thing that will get you is that hilly or mountainous country has no straight lines. After zig-zagging around, you may know that you need to go SE to get back to camp, but that's not helpful if a swamp or a sheer cliff is blocking you. You have to keep changing directions and then return to your original course, taking the detour into your calculation - SSE instead SE, or now with that landmark high peak at your back instead of behind your left shoulder.

Way up on the north slope, natives in winter (in complete darkness) can tell direction simply by the furrows in the sea ice even when stars are not visible. The prevailing winds are so frequent that exposed ice develops tiny furrows running in the direction of the those wind patterns. Some of the tales from those people are amazing. People in white-out conditions finding their way home over vast distances just by these tiny cues.

I've always found this "instinct" we have very interesting. I don't think it's a sixth sense or in any way paranormal, it's just that most people subconsciously pick up these cues without even being aware of it. They just "know" which direction to go without knowing why they know.

 

I agree, it's part of our basic instincts and we are just not aware that this is still par tof us. We just need to be educated to revive what we already know. This is why it is so interesting spending time with people that have maintiained these skills.

 

I do that pretty much every day !

 

Like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHPMocTmC08

 

Noooooo....I mix with the real thing !

 

Like to see them try that kind of $hit down here in Texas, and no, none us would be convicted for it!

 

Well I can usually find this forum in say 15 to 20 minutes.

 

You can't get convicted for killing a dead zombie after all . I bet you'd shoot them too .Youse Texans are cowboys

 

I am amazed at my ability to find the toilet in the middle of the night. Make it every time. Does that count?

 

I always thought that I had a good sense of direction but looking back at something I wrote quite a few years ago I see that it wasn't always so !

You need to see the last few paragraphs

Hi Noel !

Thanks for giving me a chance to regurgitate this tale about my own experiences with the flare pistol

I last spoke about it here:
http://www.ww2talk.com/forum/weapons-technology-equipment/23166-question-german-flare-pistol.html
and for those among you who can't be bothered to follow links I now reproduce it below.
　
Start off by clicking on this link to see both a German flare pistol and it's British counterpart:
Flare (Verey) Pistols & Signal Pistols of the World <http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-weapons/signal-pistols.htm>

Next, see the story I posted on the BBC WW2 People's War Archives:


Quote:
The time was late 1946. My current position was that of Tech Corporal for A Squadron, 4th Queen’s Own Hussars. As such, I was responsible for all the ‘Technical’ stores in the Squadron which included, Tanks, Armoured Cars, Motor Vehicles of all description and the spares included thereof. I knew that I was shortly due to be released from the Army under the current Python scheme that enabled men who had served more than 3 years 9 months abroad to be sent home and released from the forces. Understandably, I was concerned that nothing should hinder my release and ‘nothing’ included any shortfalls in the equipment that I had previously signed for. For some time now I had been training a young Lance Corporal to take over my place and I’d given him the task of checking the quantities of all the spares held on our Store Truck against the inventory for the same holdings. One day he reported to me that we were one verey light pistol short of the six that we were supposed to be holding according to the manifest. The verey light pistols were held as part of a tank’s small arms store and were used, in emergencies, to either send a pre-arranged message or identify the tank’s position to other squadron members. I had even used one myself in front line action some months earlier. The short story is that I was one pistol short and I had to do something about it. Amongst my ‘un-official’ spares was a German very light pistol, very much the same size as it’s British counterpart but un-mistakeably different to the eye. Some hard and quick thinking was called for. I solved the problem by covering all the pistols in axle grease then wrapping them up with strips of oilskin so that only the registration number was visible. The German pistol soon had it’s own number erased and replaced by the ‘correct’ British number and the six pistols were left hanging up on adjacent hooks. Not long after this event we had an un-scheduled inspection by a top-brass Brigadier who inspected all of the Regimental stores, including my own stores truck. He clambered up the wooden stairs of the truck and with his aide-de-camp sniffed around the stores that were on display. His eyes caught the very light pistols and he demanded to know what these mystery parcels were. I explained that experience had taught me that the pistols were soon affected by corrosion and so I had covered them in heavy grease but left the numbers visible for quick inspection. "Bloody good idea Corporal !" he said and telling his sidekick to "make a note of that will you" he soon, to my great relief, clambered back down the stairs. Almost sixty years after the event I still wonder whatever happened when the pistols were eventually un-wrapped and the cuckoo in the nest was revealed ! I also wonder if the rest of the units in the Division ever had to wrap all their Verey light pistols in grease !!

If I can trust my memory, you had to "break" the gun to drop the cartridge in, then cock the hammer, point the pistol skyward and squeeze the trigger to fire it. The hammer would then ignite the cartridge and "whoosh" it would fly !!!!!!!


Looking at this article again I see that I failed to expand on the only time I had seen a flare pistol being used in action.

It was while I was in the line with the 4th QOH and SSM Busty Thomas, my tank commander, had managed to get himself lost on the battlefield as dark had fallen. We had got our tracks entangled with barbed wire and had been obliged to spend time getting rid of the horrible stuff.

By the time we had finished the Squadron had gone swanning off, it was dark and we were lost.

On our 19 set, Busty asked someone to send off a flare so that we could see where we were.

This was done twice, to no avail, until on the third round being fired we looked in the exact opposite direction and spotted, with much relief, it ascending heavenward

Ron