I was certifying a dog handler as a NASAR Sar Technician once. The program required a compass course of around 1.5km, with 5 legs - the hard part was using pace counts to get the right distances, given the right headings. No electronics allowed.

This one woman for some reason absolutely wasn't doing it right, at any point. I know she was trained correctly (I trained her), she had demonstrated the right techniques in class, but absolutely could NOT get any leg right, even on direction. At first I thought her compass was hosed, so I gave her mine (which I knew was right) and she still couldn't do it.

So, in remediation I had her show me what she was doing - and she was going through the right motions, just getting the wrong results (and not just wrong, but inconsistently wrong - a different heading each time). Quite a puzzlement.

I made certain that she didn't have any metal on her - no radios, underwire bra, surgical implants (although they are not usually magnetic), any other metal. I had her ditch her pack, just in case - still no luck. Finally, I noticed that when my compass got close to her, it moved.....yep, she had her own, STRONG, magnetic field. Thats one of the weirdest things I've seen.

To get her through the class I had her tell me exactly what to do, I'd do the compass work and she could do the pacing. No problems.

Another time, I had a (former) USMC Force Recon give me crap about using orienteering compasses, instead of a mil-spec lensatic. I don't give a crap what anyone uses as long as they can successfully accomplish the exercise so I told him to use whatever he wanted.

Two hours later, he borrowed my orienteering style compass after failing the course 3 times. Oh, he also claimed that my course was laid out wrong - except I used that Lietz transit to lay it out, and everyone else was accomplishing the course OK.

Use whatever you are good with.


As far as grids go, I taught myself marine navigation when I was around 12, and celestial when I was 15. I was very happy to learn MGRS/UTM in the military, though.

And I've found that giving UTM grids to people who should but don't use it is counterproductive