Hello and welcome to this lesson of the online course Wilderness Navigation Masters, where you will learn how to locate yourself on your map.
In this lesson, you will learn:
In the first scenario, you will learn how to locate yourself, using two landmarks.
- In the second scenario, you will learn how to locate yourself on a linear landmark, like a river, using only one landmark.
These 2 techniques are known by the name of triangulation.
- In the third scenario, you will learn how to locate yourself on a linear landmark without any other landmark.
- After all of this, we will finish with two advanced techniques, that can help to locate yourself on your map, with the help of only one point-landmark, identified both on your map and around you.
So, first thing first, how to locate your position on your map using a minimum of two identified landmarks :
Before I show you how, I want you to know that you should not take the result of your location as 100% exact, because it’s just an approximative result.
How to locate yourself using only two landmarks:
Now that you understand this point, let’s see how can you apply the first technique:
[Skip video to 1:04]
One thing that I want you to know before I move to the next scene. In order to get a useable result, your landmarks should not be close to each other by an angle below 50°, or too much away from each other by an angle of more than 140°.
Because, if you do that, you will get something like that.
And just a minor error when you were taking or plotting your bearings on your map, will have a big impact on your approximate location.
Now let’s move to see how can we locate ourselves approximately on our map, being on a linear landmark and having only one identified landmark.
How to locate yourself on a linear landmark with one identified landmark only :
Useful when:
Knowing how to locate yourself on your map, with the help of another landmark is useful when you are on an existing linear landmark, like a trail or next to a river, or on an imaginary linear landmark, like between two-point landmarks and you want to pinpoint where you are along with this linear landmark.
Before I show you how I want you to know that this is possible with only one identified landmark, but you can use another one to be more accurate.
[Skip video to 4:33]
Advanced techniques to locate yourself:
These last two techniques are just a geometry magic trick that you can apply in order to locate yourself in the wilderness.
The first one is the isosceles triangle technique.
Isosceles triangle technique :
[Skip video to 8:06]
2 Back bearings technique :
[Skip video to 12:28]Don’t worry if it’s not easy for you to understand these two techniques, because they are really advanced.
And in the wilderness, most of the time, the other first 3 techniques we’ve seen in this lesson are enough to locate yourself.
EXERCISE
In this lesson’s exercise :
- 1 – I want you to go outdoor with a topo map of this area.
- 2 – Stand next to a distinguishable landmark, to pinpoint your location exactly on your map,
- 3 – Take the back-bearing of three landmarks on the terrain and plot them on your map. The more these lines intersect next to your location on your map, the more accurate you are on triangulating your location.
- 4 – Walk following a linear landmark like a trail or next to a river, and locate your location approximately with the help of the back bearing of just one landmark around you, then with the help of the forward bearing to the section at the front of you, as you’ve seen before.
- 5- Because the last two techniques are less used in the wilderness, and in order to not overwhelm you with too many techniques, I want you to only master them theoretically by rewatching them more than one time.
That’s all for this lesson, I’m sure that you have at least one question in this informations dense lesson. so to put it in the comments section below.
Thank you and see you in the next lesson.