Basic Land Navigation: How to Find Your Way and Not Get Lost

This video covers the elements of baseline navigation: baselines, directions, checkpoints, and aiming off. When you finish this lecture, including the readings, you should have a good idea of how people use features of length (roads, rivers, trails, shorelines, creeks, and so on) to help them find their away across the terrain.

For backup information, see your textbook, Land Navigation, that you downloaded in Lecture 1: Introduction. 

One learns land navigation just like they learn most other subjects--one step at a time. This lecture is step 1 in what I hope will be an enjoyable, exciting, and rewarding learning experience for you.

In this video we look at the importance of dividing your trip into legs, with each leg ending at a checkpoint. By dividing a trip into relatively short legs, you can make your away across great stretches of terrain. If you can find your way kilometer by kilometer, you can find your way across thousands of kilometers of terrain.

Then, you'll learn how to use an imaginary "runway" to deal with obstacles in your path.

Finally, you'll see how you can use unique baseline configurations to help locate yourself along a baseline, otherwise known as a "line feature."

This video covers "dead reckoning," a fundamental navigation skill, as old as navigation itself. Dead reckoning--which some people say is short for "deduction reckoning" because your position is deduced--is a good way to travel when you can't relate the terrain to the map, or the map to the terrain. This might be the case when traveling in a "white out," or when "greened in" by dense foliage, or at night time when you can't see terrain features.

Also, notice the use of "Ranger beads" to keep up with your pace count.

Also, please read the following pages on my web-site :

http://www.land-navigation.com/dead-reckoning.html

and

http://www.land-navigation.com/dead_reckoning.html

Pay particular attention to "Dead reckoning by pace count" because that's what we mostly use over land.

This video puts it all together. We go over the navigation involved in an imaginary cross-country backpacking trip, to help make the concepts of baselines, directions, checkpoints, and aiming off make comprehensive sense.

This video covers "collecting features," "check-off features," and "attack points."

Collecting features help to guide you along your way. Check-off features serve to "tell" you where you are. And attack points are easy-to-find places on the ground from where you can "attack" a point feature.

Dead reckoning for land navigators most often involves pace counting. Of course, as we said, you can measure distance by time traveled (e.g. I go one klick every 20 minutes), but pace counting is the most accurate method. Keeping up with paces traveled can be a chore, and this lecture offers simple tricks for improving your pace-counting accuracy.

Also, this lecture discusses the benefit of starting your pace count all over whenever you come to a recognizable terrain feature. Remember, terrain association rules over dead reckoning. For example, if you come to the edge of a cliff, you have arrived at the cliff's edge, even if your pace count says you haven't. :-)

This lecture reviews two common land-navigation errors: (1) Unknowingly crossing your catching feature, and (2) the parallel error.

To prevent the first error, you'll want to pick a reliably visible catching feature, and if one is available, pick out a back-up catching feature you could use just in case you blow past your original catching feature.

A parallel error involves mistaking one terrain feature for another, similar feature, usually one that's nearby. This can be so easy to do if the terrain offers similar features in close proximity to one another. Accurate pace counting when necessary to measure distance, and constant vigilance at those times when you're in an area where parallel errors are likely, help to prevent you from dislocating yourself.

Just about everyone who navigates with a map and compass sometimes loses track of where they are, that is, they get dislocated. At these times, there's only one thing to do: relocate yourself. This lecture explains how.

Sometimes called a "bug-out" bearing, your safety bearing is your "ticket home." It's the bearing to an emergency catching feature, and will take you to a place where you can either relocate, or where someone can locate you. Any time you go into a wilderness area, you'll want to at least you at a map of the area first, and figure out the direction to a suitable emergency catching feature.

Parts of the Orienteering Compass -- How to Get a Bearing (Azimuth) From a Map -- How to Follow a Bearing -- Determining the Bearing to a Distant Object -- Determining the Direction of Baseline Configurations

Running "rough compass" is sometimes called "running on the needle." It's a way of moving fast over the terrain when you're headed toward a catching feature, and you don't need a precise course. "Precision compass" demands precision compass work. It's used to go from an attack point to a point feature.

When time is an issue, such as when you're on a timed land nav exercise, or if you're participating in an orienteering meet, you'll want to understand the nature of running "rough compass."

And when you absolutely have to find an isolated point feature, you'll want to understand the nature of going "precision compass."

Magnetic Declination is a fact of life for all navigators. It's the difference between True North and Magnetic North. For those of us who use USGS topographical maps, we'll use as our declination (i.e. difference), the difference between, not True North, but Grid North and Magnetic North. This difference is called the Grid-Magnetic (G-M) angle.

When following a bearing taken from the map:

• In an area of WEST declination we'll ADD our G-M angle to the map bearing to get the proper magnetic bearing to dial into our compass.
  
  or,
  
  
• In an area of EAST declination, we'll SUBTRACT our G-M angle from the map bearing to get the proper magnetic bearing to dial into our compass.




Once you've finished this lecture, watch the lecture on either West Declination or East Declination, depending on what the declination is in your area. Once you understand well how to deal with declination in your own area, you can then watch the lecture on dealing with the opposite declination.


Bottom line: Don't be intimidated by declination. It's really pretty easy.

This lecture introduces the United States Geological Survey (USGS) 7.5 quad topographic map. You'll learn about the map's color code and its scales. 

The map offers a lot of useful information in its margins. And it's important to understand what the map's symbols mean. You can download a complete list of USGS map symbols direct from USGS at http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/TopographicMapSymbols/topomapsymbols.pdf

How to read and interpret your topographic map's contour lines. 

The ten different types of terrain features, and how they are depicted on a topographical map. 

"Orienting your map" means turning it so north on the map is pointing to north on the terrain. With an oriented map, terrain features line up with map features, making navigation more intuitive. Usually, "rough orienting" is all you need for effective navigation. By "rough orienting," I mean turn the map so that its north end more or less points to north. You don't normally have to get it exactly oriented, as long as it is more or less oriented.

This lecture includes how to measure straight-line distance on a map, and introduces the map scales, including the PRIMARY and the EXTENSION scale. After learning how to use the scales to measure a straight-line distance, you'll see how to measure distance along a crooked terrain feature, such as a road or a trail.

There's a right way, a wrong way, and an Army way. The Army's way is to use a lensatic compass. This section is for all our military friends trying to pass land nav.

In this lecture, you'll learn how to use a military protractor to obtain and plot azimuths on a map. Also for our military friends who need to pass land nav. Also, in the Land Navigation book, you'll find a bonus section on how to use this instrument to plot coordinates.