Map and Compass (Simplified)

Welcome to corporals corner today, we’re going to talk about basic land navigation using a map and compass so stick around Last time we talked about land navigation. We kept it simple and discussed the basics using a Suunto mc2 So I thought today why not continue that discussion and keep it simple – a quick review I’m going through a topographical map into that equation So here we have our basic Suunto MC to start here at the top we have our signal and sighting mirror It can be used for hygiene purposes as well You could take that mirror and use it to look in areas on your body that you can’t normally see looking for fights Scratches ticks, etc Moving down we have our rotating bezel ring now on that bezel ring. We have a series of numbers Those would be your degrees for your azimuth or bearing that we’ll talk about later Inside of our bezel ring, we have our magnetic needle and you can see how sensitive that is just from contact with this pencil It’s moving around. So that’s good to go Red means North black is south. The red will always face north Now perpendicular to our magnetic needle we have our orienting arrow Sometimes referred to as a doghouse or a shed. So most a put red in the shed So all you got to do this rotate your body with your compass Put the red end of that needle in that shed or that dog in that doghouse Now our puzzle ring we actually have or right below it we have a glow-in-the-dark line here and here Now I think of it back to the Future analogy this one on top up here will tell you where you’re going The bottom one will tell you where you were so that will be your very inert azmuth that would be your reverse azmuth The bottom of our compass here we have a clear plastic base plate why it’s called a base plate compass They have a series of scales My personal favorite we have the magnifying lens or Sun lens for starting fires And That right there in the nutshell is the sole reason why I’m carrying the Suunto mc2 baseplate compass or mirrored compass over lensatic compass Example the lensatic compass would be an old school military commando compass It’s a multi-use item and the options contained in here will make your life a heck of lot easier out there Let’s go ahead and do a quick review on how to shoot an azimuth. Are you gonna do? Look at your compass You have a arrow on top here or glooms arc indicator It one the bottom as well you want the top is going to tell you where you’re going The one that bottom tells you where you were take your bezel ring and Put it on zero or north So line up north or zero with that glow-in-the-dark indicator on top all you’re gonna do is Look out there where you want to go So I’m go ahead take my compass Make sure my arms are extended The compass is level. I’m gonna look from my signal mirror or sighting mirror. There’s an opening here at the bottom with a v-notch Now I take that v-notch, I’m a tree like a gunsight looking through that gun sight in the direction that I want to go I See a tree out there in the distance So at this point right here all I’m gonna do I’m going to rotate my bezel ring and move that doghouse to my needle Put the red in the shed or the dog in the dog house Keeping that be nuts or gun sight lined it with my target for my tree Once that’s complete. I’ll look down check my brain or azimuth. It’s 40 degrees And go ahead and double-check We’re dead on And now I know I can walk that Boehner azimuth of 40 degrees and a run right into that tree Once I’m at that tree, all I got to do is step to the opposite side Reshoot my barrier has me at the forty degrees and continue on in that straight line Here’s my start point Or 40 degree bearing or azimuth Here’s our tree I could then move to the opposite side of that tree Take my compass locate a new target And continue walking at 40 degrees in a straight line Opening my topographical map The first thing I come to you on the far right hand side is my map the legend and map information All the way down here. Okay. And the first thing I see is the company name my topo and It was printed in 2013 now the map was printed in 2013, it doesn’t mean it was surveyed in 2013 We’ll come to that in a minute Working our way down We come to our vicinity map And the vicinity map is basically a line of the state that you’re operating in and looking at that outline You should see a red square or a red rectangle and that’s gonna give you the area of that state but this map was printed from Right beneath that you’re gonna see a couple of dates this one here is 1995 That means the map was surveyed or this section of map was surveyed in 1995 Right next to that. It gives a contour line interval will come to contour lines in a few minutes Working our way down we come to our Declination diagram and that’s going to give you a true north reading Grid north and magnetic north then we discussed that last time last time we only dealt with magnetic north this time We’re gonna deal with grid north And the last thing I want to talk about is our map scale we’ve got two scales on here The first one says 1 in 10,000 and what that means is that every inch on your map represents 10,000 inches on the ground So if your map says one in 25,000 or one in a hundred thousand It’s the same thing 1 inch on the map gives you the 25 thousand or a hundred thousand inches on the ground Now right beneath that we have our scale and feet or meters and that this represents a distance So if you want to shoot a bearing our azimuth and then mark it on the map you can actually measure and see how far You’re actually gonna walk so you can confirm that with your pace count. Now one thing I want to back up to This is 1 in 10,000. The lower. The number is the larger your grid square is going to be there for more detail you’re gonna get So one in a hundred thousand your grid square might be like this very difficult to see All right, so we have five basic cosine map first one’s gonna be black anything black is gonna be a man-made structure Next we have blue blue is gonna be water rivers streams creeks lakes oceans, etc Green just what it is vegetation. You’re gonna have a forest or wooded area Browns may be a relief feature an example of a relief feature is going to be a Contour line and we’ll come back to that later Lastly we have red and that’s going to indicate boundaries or highways Now any other color besides these five is strictly put there to relay special information and you can find that in your legend Let’s go ahead and move on to contour lines Now a big part of a topographical map are contour lines and contour line gives you a way to judge elevation That’s the sole purpose on Your map Legend and gives you the contour line interval and I showed you that earlier and I believe it was 20 foot between each line Every fifth line is darker and marked with the specific elevation and The closer the lines are together, which is a rapid gain elevation So right, here’s a pretty good example That this contour line is darkened. It’s 700 and you follow that all the way around that means that whole area is 700 feet Now according to our map legend every contour line is 20 foot and every 5th line should be darkened with a specific Elevation. Let’s go encounter contour lines. So from right here, we have one two, three, four and five The fifth one is darkened and the distance between each one is 20 foot. So it’s seven twenty seven Forty seven sixty seven eighty eight hundred So far so good you’re doing an outstanding job Let’s go ahead and power through this and talk about major in minor terrain features The first major terrain features are going to be a hilltop Here we have a good example of the hilltop we have rings within rings or circles inside of circles The rapid elevation gain we talked about earlier and there’s our circle. There’s our hilltop a Ridge There’s a good example of a ridge a ridge is nothing more than a series of hilltops in a row Starting right here is one two and three Saddle When you look for a saddle, all you’re doing is looking for two or more hilltops in a row Which is your Ridge and between those two hilltops is a saddle Valley Hey valleys look round that’s usually bordered by two or three sides of higher ground and it forms this u-shaped right here And depression And unless we have a depression you see one right here. Perfect example It’s bordered on all sides by higher ground and you have the sloping tick marks right here To show that’s lower ground All right good to go we talked about five major terrain features now, let’s talk about three more the Minor Train features Those are going to be a draw So in this example right here, it’s pretty good indicator of a draw. Now it draw a sloping terrain that forms a V That points towards that Ridge. So here’s our rich one two, and three hilltops in a row is a ridge and we have that V that points up towards that Ridge a Spur and a cliff Here’s a good example of a spur Now Spurs are contour lines that jut outward from that Ridge. So here’s our hilltop and our ridge and they’re jutting outward And making its way down into that Valley and lastly we have an example of a cliff Cliff is nothing more than vertical or sloping contour lines that are close together with tick marks Indicating a steep drop-off Let’s go ahead and move on to reading the map How do you read a map and determine which grid square you’re actually operating in on that large map? Well, it’s very simple before we get to that. Let’s go ahead and make sure that we understand something here. So there’s no confusion No matter what scale that you use meaning one in ten thousand one in twenty five thousand evening one in a hundred thousand The grid square is made up of one thousand meters by one thousand meters which actually creates that square one thousand meters by one thousand meters now those lines that create that actual grid square are Longitude and latitude lines now looking at your map the lines that run up and down are longitude ones They go horizontal or sideways which are east and west our latitude lines. Now the million-dollar question How do you actually read the map? think of Battleship Got your numbers and letters You go over and up. Boom you hit or miss it’s exact same thing we’re gonna look at our numbers and we’re gonna read it from the right and Then go up Okay, so we’re talking about battleship and the Rita map is very simple all you’re gonna do you have our imaginary mock-up map right here? We’re gonna start at the bottom left corner I’m going to move to the right. So let’s say if you want to be in grid square 6922 Six nine two two all I’m gonna do Start the bottom left corner I’m going to slide over to my right tell you at 69 Once I get to 69, I’m gonna go ahead and go up to twenty-two put a dot right there That tells me six nine two two Is this grid square right here And we have 1,000 meters by 1,000 meters to work with I Start at the bottom left corner and move over to where it says 69 69 We’re gonna go up to 22 And that one’s 22 so that corner right there gives me this grid square To work with Now the last thing I want to talk about before we go ahead and move on to plotting the route is Making our map and compass work together in unison horn harmony. Now a previous video. We talked about three types of north We had true north magnetic north and grid north now true north is north. According to the Earth’s axis Magnetic north from last time there’s nothing more than that magnetic needle and which direction that it points to And grid north refers to the northern Lea lines on your map That’s why you always want rotates your map to the north before you go ahead and use it. So with that understanding Let’s talk about this right here. This is our declination diagram and it can be found on your map legend So looking at this declination diagram It gives me a sixth degree offset or six degree difference between my magnetic north and my grid north. What does that mean? That means I’m out here and I’m shooting an azimuth of saying 100 degrees It could be six degrees more which is 106 or could be six degrees less 94 now keep this in mind Every single degree that you’re off equals 92 feet in one mile or It means one mile off in 60 miles So people say I’m only a couple degrees off over a long distance You can walk right by something and have no idea was there to think about that. So the million dollar question again How do we go ahead and account for that six degrees? How do you make our map and compass work together in unison? Here’s how I learned it think of the military Major to general is a promotion. So magnetic north to grid north. We’re gonna add General two major is a demotion and the heck of a demotion or Grid north to magnetic north we’re gonna subtract Just like we talked about There’s a six degree difference between my neck north and grid North even tells you right here the magnetic declination of six degrees west at the center of the map on June 11th 2018 so I wanna go I don’t want to add six degrees to my compass or If you have a Suunto mc2 you flip it over it tells you east or west so six degrees west or simply add six degrees Now looking at our seem to mc2 bezel ring We have a declination indicator right here and set to zero And I mentioned before with six degrees west. So there’s our West and there’s our east declination So I want to go ahead I want to add six degrees to this On the backside are assumed to mc2 We have an adjustment screw right there we also have our declination indicator Tells me western declination and Houston declination. So I want to go and I want to add six degrees. I want to rotate using a key or a small screwdriver I want to adjust it and move that indicator six degrees every single one of these red tick marks represents two degrees Someplace in a key or a small screwdriver into our adjustment pin You can now rotate this left or right so I want to head to the west I Want to add six degrees? It’s two four Six You All right now that my map and compass can work in unison Let’s go and talk about Rob planning before you plan a route. And you go ahead and orientate your map So take your map outside and what I found works best, let’s put your map somewhere dry flat level You have no contact with metal whatsoever. And that goes for picnic tables Well, this place does have fancy wood or plastic picnic tables Well, they’re held together with what nails screws metal hinges things like that All right, so very adjusted our compass to grid north and a counter for that six degree offset or six degree difference So to do this all you gotta do take our compass Place it at the bottom left corner Lamp the edge of my base plate with that line or that border of that map and Just like our first video or I put red in the shed or that dog in that doghouse And as long as you don’t bump remove that map you’re dialed in to grid north you should be good to go Let’s talk about route planning route plan is very simple. It’s that infamous day hike, but it shouldn’t go wrong Route planning are you doing as a series of as miss or bearings? You want to get the reverse azimuth or bearing to each location that you go to? Why go ahead and keep track your pace count And you want to know what grid location that you’re gonna operate in So right here we got 300 meters or going to measure the distance on here looks like an inch and 3/16 Is approximately 300 meters Let’s go ahead and plot a route to figure out our start point. Let’s say our start point is right here Here’s a parking lot right there My vehicles park for the day and I want to go out here and explore all this area and check it out So I want to go ahead and walk from here to that hilltop right there Then we’re gonna go ahead and go across this saddle to that hilltop From the hilltop we can look down this spur right there and see the water So, that’d be a good spot to go down and get some water. We supply Once we’re all hydrated again, we’re gonna go ahead and from this water source Back to our vehicle. So how do we do that? Not moving the map once again, I’m gonna go ahead and take our compass and Place it on our start point And where we want to go want to go to the center of that hilltop? So it’s good advantage point so we can look around so all I’m gonna do just Line those two up And put a dot right there at the center of that tilt up Now can draw a line from the hilltop to my start point Though since we’re already here to get our bearing our azimuth. All we got to do is now rotate our bezel ring from zero And put that dog in the doghouse or that red in the shed And once we do that you Go to our top glow-in-the-dark indicator And read that number and said it’s 30 degrees so I know There’s a 30 degree azimuth or bearing from my start point to that hilltop Now go ahead and measure our distance We said about an inch and 3/16 was somewhere around 300 meters So now we’re looking at let’s round up say inch and a quarter So an inch and a quarter an inch into quarters two and a half inches That’s 600. So we’re looking at about 620 meters from my start point to that hilltop So from start point to our point number one, we’re to walk of bearing our azimuth of thirty degrees We’re to walk to half of 620 meters. Now. What about back? Azimuth? What we’re gonna do? Go to our bottom glow-in-the-dark indicator. Here’s our top one Tells me where I’m going. Bottom one tells me where I was And looking at that it’s 210 degrees To have a back a Smith of 210 degrees Down here. I’m in a note 4 features point number one is a hilltop You The last thing I want to talk about before we get out of here that pertains to route planning are five Navigational tools that you can use that will make your life a lot easier when you’re out there Once you get confidence built up give a little more experience You can apply these tools and basically sort of cheat the system and get to where you want to go a lot faster And with a lot less hassle these five navigational tools are handrail backstop baseline aiming off and escape or panic asmath a Handrail is simply a linear object that can be used as a guideline Talking about a handrail. Look at our start point that parking lot. We’re going to move along this burying our azmuth to our hilltop Directly to my left. We have a road and it parallels the direction of travel So in a way I can use this road as my linear object like a shooting Baron or azimuth to that Road Walk that row for that 600 meters Once they get at six iron meters Shoot an azimuth to that hilltop and I’m there and that might be a lot easier Not as scenic, but it’d be a lot easier than busting brush all the way across here for six hours Backstop is the point at which you shouldn’t go past for example fences walls large rivers bodies of water pipelines etc In this next example, we’re looking for a backstop. So on the top of this hill I look down and I see that Creek I’ll make my way down that spur Into that Creek so I can get hydrated Now here’s my pipeline. The creek is located on this side of that pipeline So I know if I cross over that pipeline end up over here. I’ve gone too far so in a way I could use that pipeline as a backstop a Baseline you use a baseline so you can return to we started from And now a baseline goes hand in hand with aiming off If you want to go ahead and aim off deliberately so you can use a baseline You take a bearing left or right of the objective then use the baseline to get back So in a sense what you’re doing, you know where you need to be and you see an easier route So you going to shoot an azimuth their bearing? Through that easier route or that place where there’s less brush you go through it once you get through that area You know a turn left or right to get back on track or go back to your start point Aiming off and baseline go hand in hand. Let’s use our example this hilltop right here We can look down and see that Creek or that stream Let’s say for example, we can look over and see a road right here And we want go ahead and shoot an azimuth or burying directly to that intersection So we can get the name of that road for our map So all you gotta do is shoot azimuth to that corner and be good to go Well, what if lateral drift occurs, or I’m careless and we end up over here We’re not really going to know we’re actually past that intersection. So I’m gonna deliberately aim off over here use this road as a baseline so I can turn left and walk right to that intersection and Number five we have an escape or panic asmath and that’s meant for exactly what it says You’re out there you get lost start to panic and you need to escape It’s a predetermined as myth or burying but you can dial into your compass If you are lost and you can get to a known point like a road or a house And lastly we have an escape azimuth or panic azimuth So looking at our entire route here, we went first point second point third point and then back to our starting point Now anywhere on here I should be able to dial in a predetermined Bearing or azimuth and will take me to a road or to a pipeline So somewhere I get lost in here and I need to escape I just got a dial in zero while my compass take me right to that road or 270 will take me to that road ninety will take me to the pipeline and Worst case 180 will take no heed down here this road Welcome back land navigation is still outstanding Just my humble opinion now, if you haven’t already go ahead go back and watch my first video on land navigation simplified Take those tools techniques go out there and practice them apply them and then go ahead and try and attack this bad boy There’s a lot of information It was a real long video and I apologize for that It was better in my opinion to do it one long video then go ahead and break it down into five or six 10-minute videos But truth be told The only way you’re gonna get better at this is actually go out and do it Practice practice practice practice will make you better not perfect or make you better and you can always do better than you are now With that once again think if your comments abusing support, thanks for watching. Get out in the field have some fun. I’m gonna catch you next time