USE YOUR WATCH AS A COMPASS

“I’m lost!”

Ever been hiking and lost?

Searching for Pokemon and have no idea where you’re at???

Your phone dies, you’re stuck in a field, or a forest, or a valley…

“HELLLLPPPP!”

Well, did you know that you can actually navigate yourself to freedom? Find your bearings and get back on track, with nothing more than your analog wrist watch?

This is because you can use those hands as a compass, and find your North, South, East and West again…

Which can be a real life saver!

It’s pretty easy too…

This is how you use your wrist watch as a compass:

Take your watch off and hold it in your left hand. Hold it straight out with 12 noon pointing to the left.

Now… Look at the hour hand (the smallest hand). Find it and turn it towards the sun so the arrow is pointing towards that big burning star.

Like so…

Once you have the sun lined up, then all you need to do is to find the halfway mark between the hour hand and 12…

Once you find the halfway mark, that will point you SOUTH!

Like this image shows below…

See, that was easy!

Now, to verify these results tested, I brought up my compass (the iphone has a built in compass, not that this would help you any if your battery was dead… but for testing purposes, it’s ideal.)

The compass showed me the four cardinal directions…

And they were absolutely accurate!

As shown in the overlay below…

See, it worked!

And it worked pretty freaking good…

I was impressed!

A couple of hours later, I double checked the compass again…

And once again, it worked perfect!

And one more last test…

3 hours later, I went outside (freaky, eh?) and tested my watch compass again…

BINGO!

Still extremely accurate!

That’s a great thing to learn…

I can find the North Pole!

Do keep in mind that this works fine if you’re in the USA… or anywhere on the Northern Hemisphere. But if you’re on the other side of the Equator, the Southern side, then you have to align things differently… Point 12 Noon at the sun. Find the halfway mark between noon and the hour hand, and THAT will point you NORTH!

Odd… Just like the toilet water flushing counterclockwise…

Oh wait, that’s a myth! Right?

Daylight Savings Time is supposed to mess up these results by an hour by the way… You’re supposed to subtract an hour to find true North…

But I live in DST and in all 3 tests… The time was PERFECT, I didn’t have to accommodate for daylight at all…

The halfway point worked fine!

Do note that if the sun doesn’t go down until late, like 8-9 pm, then you’ll have to still point the hour hand at the sun…

Which means, you’ll have to turn your back to the sun, to find the direction markers.

Which just makes sense!

So find your headings, find your Pokemon, and get the hell out!

Or just buy a real compass from Amazon!

Cheers! :)