Fieldcraft Learning Land Nav
- Thread starter JoeyAld
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Re: Learning Land Nav
Go out in parts of Utah/Arizona once where there truly is nothing, and think, eh, I'm not going too far from my car.
Give it 20 minutes and you'll have that sinking feel that even though there may be terrain 'landmarks' you remember, you have no fucking clue where you are. All in 20 minutes.
Land nav is something that is a lost skill, but can cost you for not having.
Go out in parts of Utah/Arizona once where there truly is nothing, and think, eh, I'm not going too far from my car.
Give it 20 minutes and you'll have that sinking feel that even though there may be terrain 'landmarks' you remember, you have no fucking clue where you are. All in 20 minutes.
Land nav is something that is a lost skill, but can cost you for not having.
Re: Learning Land Nav
Awesome, land nav is a great tool to have in the box. Compass batteries never wear out
Awesome, land nav is a great tool to have in the box. Compass batteries never wear out
In basic training at Fort Ord in 1958 we had a short course in Land Nevagation. However the Army still used civilian maps in Germany during the thirty months I was stationed there. JesseB
it is about time someone started a thread on land nav. I mean field craft without land nav? I think land nav. is one of the most important skills in field craft or In life.but especially in what we do. for example range estimation.Between a map and compass and miling,do you really need a range finder? Because unless you have 2K-25K to spend on a top quality range finder you would be throwing your money away on one that doesn't work half the time and has limited range. a compass and a map always works and has no limits.
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I took my Son Chukar hunting with me one time. He was around 12 years old at the time. I parked in a old gravel pit which you couldn't see once you were twenty yards away from it.
We walked around the montain for about 8 hrs hunting and it was starting to get toward dusk so we headed back to the truck. He kept telling me that we weren't going to the truck and he said we were about a mile from it. I told it it was three hundred yards ahead of me and he kept arguing with me right up until we almost stepped on the truck.
Jump ahead twenty years. My son lived in Fallon Nev. and he decided to try a different route through Dixie Valley to get to Elko. I happened to call him when I got off work that day around 4pm to see what he was doing. He told me he was driving to Elko and I asked him at what time he started he said 8am at which point I asked him where he was at and he didn't know. I then asked him if he was looking into the Sun and he said yes at which point I told him he was going the wrong way. I then told him that if he was looking at the sun anytime after 10am he had been going the wrong direction.
He had been driving around in circles in the middle of Nev all day long.
He gets his Land Nav. from his mother.
I try to keep my land nav skills as high as I can. Being a Land Surveyor doesn;t hurt either. I don;t know as much as I feel I should know but I alseways keep it on my mind.
Great information. I have one question though. Say I wanted a map of a particular area. I know that usgs have maps but where can I go online to order them and have them in the scales that I can use my gear with? Any help would be much appreciated...
Thanks in advance.
Thanks in advance.
MyTopo | Custom Topo Maps, Aerial Photos, Online Maps, and Map Software
I've got a few maps for my adventures from these guys. They're fast and produce great quality maps, and you can customize them in most common ways as well including MGRS.
You can also download free USGS topographic maps in PDF format from this site:
USGS TNM 2.0 Viewer
They're actually in a GeoPDF format, which is very useful. They have highly detailed imagery which you can toggle on/off. You can also toggle pretty much everything else (contour lines, roads, other features, etc...). If you have access to a color printer you can print pretty decent maps for wherever you're going, or view the PDFs on a phone/tablet.
I would confidently say that land navigation is significantly more important than marksmanship skills in this life.
One thing to learn right off the bat is your pace count on a measured course. Your pace count is a very accurate system for measuring distance, believe it or not.
From there, you can start learning your directional methods of orientation, map-reading, dead reckoning, terrain association, hand rails, en route check points, back stops, and attack points.
One thing to learn right off the bat is your pace count on a measured course. Your pace count is a very accurate system for measuring distance, believe it or not.
From there, you can start learning your directional methods of orientation, map-reading, dead reckoning, terrain association, hand rails, en route check points, back stops, and attack points.
If on the flats, use the stars, I spent a great bit of time on Bering Sea in Western Alaska, that place had got some flat land, miles and miles of blowing snow. But most of the time you can follow the stars. I even used stars successfully on the compass course at the Benning School for boys. Benning's fairly flat, hard to see terrain features at night.
Pace counts are good to know if the terrain allows, but useless if you're on skis or ruff terain. Learn to move with and without pace counts.
I like stars, they worked for sailor's for hundreds of years. If you have a watch, and travel in the daytime, you can use the sun.
Pace counts are good to know if the terrain allows, but useless if you're on skis or ruff terain. Learn to move with and without pace counts.
I like stars, they worked for sailor's for hundreds of years. If you have a watch, and travel in the daytime, you can use the sun.
+ 1 for the stars for night land nav, if you have them. You can shoot an azimuth between two prominent stars, and use that bearing for about 15 minutes or more, then re-shoot. Have another plan for overcast though. Tritium compasses are actually good tools in that regard.
Thanks for the link to the free material! I had to use the alternate download site. The main one kept triggering some mysterious MS safety program that wouldn't let me download.
I read through Part 1 and it looks good to me. In about 1985 I took Army ROTC map reading and remembered some of the protractor work, but I don't think we ever learned to use a Cammenga lensatic compass. This gives the right ways to hold it when sighting, and leads you through some features I didn't notice about my Cammenga, such as that the outer scale of the dial is in mils and degrees are on the inner scale, so be sure to read the right scale.
I read through Part 1 and it looks good to me. In about 1985 I took Army ROTC map reading and remembered some of the protractor work, but I don't think we ever learned to use a Cammenga lensatic compass. This gives the right ways to hold it when sighting, and leads you through some features I didn't notice about my Cammenga, such as that the outer scale of the dial is in mils and degrees are on the inner scale, so be sure to read the right scale.
