Exercise 11 - Navigation with Map & Compass

Introduction

This week we went out to a local property owned by the university called The Priory which we used as our navigation site for using a map and compass. The navigation maps we created in exercise 3 (fig. 1) will be used to navigate to 5 points around The Priory. We were to just use a compass to find each point and navigate from point to point.

Map of The Priory from exercise 3 used during the navigation session. (fig. 1)

Methods

The only things we could use for travelling from point to point were the map of The Priory and an orienteering compass (fig. 2). This exercise will strengthen our navigation skills and hopefully prevent us from ever getting lost; we're geographers after all.

An orienteering compass used during the orientation session to lead us point to point. (fig. 2)

We first mapped out each of the five points and the start point and drew a line from the start line to each point in order of how we were to navigate. Our group had to start with point 5 and move to points 1, 2, 3, 4 and then back to the start point. We first needed to measure the distance from point to point and convert that into footsteps. We simply measured the distance in centimeters, converted that into meters on the ground and then converted that into footsteps by using the stride-length per 100 meters that we measured back in exercise 3. Once we had the lines drawn to each point we determined the azimuth we were to follow from point to point. To do this we lined up the arrow on the compass with the line from the start point to the next point (with the arrow facing the direction we wanted to go) and then lined north arrow with north on the map. Once we had north facing the right way the arrow would show what the azimuth is from the point that we started from to the point we were going to.

Once we had written down all of the azimuths we needed to from each point to point we could start the journey. The first point was at 320 degrees, so we set the arrow to point at 320 degrees and put the north arrow inside of the red outline because 320 degrees only means something if you know where north (0 degrees) is. This is also called 'putting the red in the shed' as in putting the red north arrow in the red outline or shed.

Once we knew the direction we were to go, one person would stand at the starting location while the next person would walk in the direction of the azimuth while staying in sight of the person standing at the start location. To make the explanation easier lets call the person standing at the start point with the compass, the navigator and the person walking ahead toward the next point, the scout. When the scout was far enough away the navigator would confirm that they were at the correct azimuth from the start point and they would then leave the start point and walk to the scout. The navigator would then take the exact position of the scout and the scout would then walk to another point in the correct direction from the navigator. This would be repeated until the scout had gone far enough to be at the correct destination based on the number of footsteps we had determined at the beginning. We would then move the compass to the next azimuth to navigate to the next point. At every point we would repeat this process until we had navigated to every point and had ended up back at the start point.

Discussion

This whole process took about two hours and it was a perfect day with no clouds and it was a nice 70 degrees. We had some trouble because we had mapped the start point incorrectly and had to redraw the lines to each point which changed the distance and azimuth for each path from point to point. After that we had little trouble finding each point however, some difficulties did occur when we came across dips and crevasses because they made it more difficult to stay on course and navigate through the thick forest.

When we were navigating from point to point we would almost always be off from directly hitting the point, but we were never off by more than 10 meters. This is some surprising accuracy giving that we just had a map and a compass.

Conclusion

I was very surprised how close we were to actually directly hitting the points given that we had just drawn the lines from point to point and walked in the right direction. If we had even been off by a few degrees we could have completely missed the target points. The use of map and compass is very important in terms of navigation and geography skills and is a valuable skill to have.