Yeah, for some reason I woke.

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In the middle of the night.  Too hot.  Whatever.  I'll try to get back to bed, if I can.  It may just be that the weather is simply too warm for me.  Coming into spring and all.

While awake, I was looking around my usual sites.  I ran across a notion, and was reminded of my notion regarding advice.  I saw a piece of equipment that is good for helping one to begin to understand some things.  While some people get into non-electronic land nav, they don't go quite far enough.  With gps, it is difficult to get people to do more.  Actually, unless people are regularly out in the bush, it is difficult to get them to even use gps.  Land navigation, for most people, is finding that new eatery without having to think about how to get there.  Fair enough.  But for those who do get out and go, there is a tool that might make the task a little easier, give them something to tinker with, and add something usable to their data sets and psych preps.  You can always back it up, or verify, with gps, innit.

h/t Survival Sherpa, for the idea in the first place

The problem I am seeing at both sites is this, they are both copying an idea without molding it to their usage.  Both are suggesting 9x4 beads.  Which would be a fine start.  However, I would suggest, if you are going to make this tool, that you actually go out and figure out your pacing , and possibly on various terrain, before crafting the tool.  Why?  I don't know about you, but I would like to have the device crafted so that the beads actually matched my paces in a logical form.  A form that is logically, mathematically, and aesthetically pleasing.  Okay, even numbers, or at least right numbers that add to a destination sum, are my things.  If it took me, say, 50 paces to travel 100 yards (which it does, at simple time), then I would want the beads to make simple sense.  I would want 10 beads on the one end, and 5 beads on the other.  That would pace out an hundred meters for me.  Why copy a notion exactly if it doesn't even, for sure, fit your needs in a mathematically precise manner?  Why the Rangers chose four by nine, I don't know, but what you will find with the Rangers is they are... heavily top to bottom, tradition based, and a bit eccentric.  No snub, mostly, just the way of it.  Some of us, if we decide to engage a notion, take it, strip it down, build it back up, then deploy it... if we want.  Or... not.  :p  My guess is, Rangers, like most forces, at standard pace, are taught the meter pace, so 4x9 would equal 72 meters.  Perhaps that number has some significance to them, or is seen as a quarter of something significant, or it is what  was used to start and has since been emulated 'just because that's how we do things'.  Dunno.  Could look it up, prefer to blather.

(Actually, did look it up, a bead on the 9 count strand per 10 paces, means 900 meters, which leads to 3600 meters when the four bead side is used.  But that has no significance in miles (1,609.344 meters in a mile).  So... I don't know.  Esoteric military discipline and tradition, I suppose.  I'll stick with my even, 10x5, I think, especially since using the metric system which was designed for ease of use.  Hmm... the Rangers might be poking fun at the metric system, and higher ups, Europeans?  One could hope. Or just not very good at engineering math and science into an easy corral? :)  *poke*

No.  I haven't gotten back into land nav.  Shooting, hiking, and camping might get me there.  So, yeah.  But...  As things are coming together, as tools are being gathered, and as I look things over, this is a tool I will be considering.  The mountains will make such a tool a bit trickier.  But the use of the tool will actually ease some of the discomfort of trying to get back in shape.  My mind will be on something other than sore muscles and wheezing lungs.  And, really, once shape is gained, I think it will average out so that the tool will work in the mountains, roughly.  Perhaps several such tools for various situations, one for flatlands, one for general mountainous paths?  Something inexpensive to tinker with.  If you have the time and interest.

Take advice.  Fine.  But then make it your own.  You are free to do that.  If you mess it up, I might laugh.  But if that makes you end up defining the craft, my laughter will have done you a service.  AND you will get to come back to me and... have the last laugh.  I won't eat you, probably.  Go, do.  Don't sit around waiting to be told, or simply following what others do by wrote.  Some more advice, an idea for a little potential toy, but more, I hope, a gift of thought.  Go have some fun.  I will keep trying.