![]() ![]() All you really need to navigate in most all regions in this area that we travel is a compass, a topo map, and ability to interpret the many constant navigational clues you see around you.įor land navigation, you don't need that much accuracy. Most navigation should be done by pre-planning and terrain association anyway, with assistance from a compass. There's a neat trick for doing that, which is very easy but may not be obvious at first. Even a cheap (almost free) short metric scale ruler can be used on any random scale map, with just as much accuracy as the specialized square plotter/protractor. The scale on the compass baseplate will do. There are other very accurate methods to plot or measure coordinates without the specialized square plotter. I'm trying to lean the course away from having to purchase and bring that separate piece of specialized plotter equipment with you in the field. ![]() But use as a simple protractor alone (not as a coordinate plotter) does not depend on map scale.īut a good baseplate compass is certainly an accurate protractor, and it also "remembers" the azimuth it is set to. When we print small maps for desktop training, we have to adjust the printer scale by as much as 4% up or down depending on which office printer we use for them to match scale with the square plotter. As nartreb says, if you print your own map, you have to ensure it is printed at a standard scale set for the plotter you have if you want to use the coordinate measurement function. You can get them in different versions, depending on the standard scale of the map you have. The square plotter is used for reading and plotting UTM coordinates as well as a protractor. The course was originally developed before I got there by army veterans, so the army navigation field manual and using the square plotting protractor play a big part in the lessons and exercises. I co-instruct a 2-day Land Navigation course for Homeland Security, mostly to law enforcement and SAR type students. (I've been hiking in NH for a couple of decades, still haven't finished the Grid. That's not a terribly useful technique in New England, where if you've got good lines of sight, you probably already know where you are. In Alaska, I have used my compass as a protractor for sighting angles to distant peaks to triangulate my location on a large map. For trail distances, I'll usually mark my map in advance so I don't need to measure in mid-hike. If I want a more precise distance I'll use the ruler on my compass, but I can't remember the last time I bothered. I'm not usually navigating with great precision if I want to measure distances on my map, I usually compare my thumbnail or some such to the map scale, then step that over my route. It's only marginally useful to me, as I'm rarely travelling in a straight line anyway. Most backpackers' compasses have a ruler or two built into the side(s). Adjust your printer so that the scale on your printouts (for a given zoom level in Caltopo) matches one of the scales pre-printed on your compass/protractor. The size of your printouts is mostly up to your printer. Wasn't sure if there was some way of you could set a ratio so they could be utilized in some way on CalTopo maps.Īny feedback on the topic would be appreciated. Is there a setting on CalTopo that you can make the map render to a specific resolution so that it corresponds to one of the grids on the protractor? Obviously you can zoom in and out on CalTopo to print the exact area you want so I suspect this makes a product like this useless. I do most of my bearing markings, etc on CalTopo maps. I guess my big question with their use is that they are preprinted in various scales. Does anybody here use these products? They make it sound like a common item in the military, special forces, etc so I assume they have some value as a navigational tool (or they have successfully hooked me with their marketing hype ). I guess they are small clear plastic cards with measuring lines, etc to make plotting bearings, measuring distance and so forth easier and more accurate. While looking for another compass recently I stumbled upon a product called a grid protractor. ![]()
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