When performing land navigation, it sometimes becomes difficult to remember everything you need to. The most vital information being your pace count. Your pace count gives you an estimate of how far you’ve traveled since your last waypoint. It gives you an idea of where you are and how far you have to go to the next waypoint. Trust me when I say that losing your pace count can completely ruin your day, you either have to backtrack to the last waypoint, or completely recalculate your location from a more difficult location. Having pace count beads, also known as ranger beads, helps you keep track of your pace count and is an immeasurable help in a land navigation scenario. You can purchase these if you’d like, but in the case that you don’t have them when you need them, yours break inconveniently, or you’re like me and are too cheap to pay for something this easy to make yourself, Instructables.com has an article on how to make your own beads from three simple materials, though you can feasibly fabricate these out of any reasonable material.
Army Ranger Beads via [Instructables.com]