Terrain Association: Navigation

Lesson 7 of 9

Terrain Association

1You have been set down somewhere on the training sheet. Open Ground View and drag to look all the way round, and up and down.
2Note what you can see and in which direction: high ground, a valley, the road, a wood, the lake, buildings, the relay tower. The bearing you are facing is shown above the view.
3Open Topographic Map and find a place where the contours and symbols match: the same features, in the same directions, about as far away.
4Open 3D Terrain to check how the hills and valleys sit against each other, then return to the map.
5Choose Place estimate and tap the map where you think you are standing. Tap again to move it. Your estimate keeps its grid reference in every view.
6Submit your estimate. Answer Review shows the actual position, how far out you were and in which direction, and the features that give the position away.

Method

Reading the ground against the map

·Work from big to small: the shape of the high ground first, then water and roads, then single objects such as a building or a mast.
·A feature is only useful with a direction and a rough distance. Two features in different directions cut the sheet down far more than one.
·Check the ground under your feet: is it level, or does it fall away, and toward what? The contours at your estimate must say the same.
·What you cannot see matters too. If the map shows a road beside your estimate and there is none in view, the estimate is wrong.

Grid reference

Tap the map

Precision: Names a 1 m square

Precision is not accuracy. More digits name a smaller square; they do not make the map, or your plotting, any more exact. On a 1:50 000 sheet a careful reader is good to about 50 m.

Legend

1 km grid line
Index contour
Contour
Road
Track
Creek, lake
Woodland
Building

Scale: 1:50 000
Contour interval: 10 m
Grid: MGRS 12U WD · WGS 84

The terrain, names and elevations are fictional training data. The grid is the real MGRS grid for the CFB Wainwright area.