Saturday, February 05, 2005
Land Navigation
Ever heard the phrase "The most dangerous thing in the world is a second lieutenant with a map and a compass"? The enlisted love to repeat it, but the truth is that many know little to nothing about land navigation themselves. Land navigation is not easy, especially for someone coming from the city, having never really set foot in the woods.
We has classes all week on land nav and then they threw us into the woods on Thursday. That is the TBS preferred method of instruction; cram your brain with info for a few days and then throw you to the wolves. Didn't quite get it? Too bad, time to go lieutenant!
Thursday was our first practical application of our skills, we headed out into TA-5, a training area a little more than one grid square in size. ( A grid square is marked on the map, it indicates a square 1000 meters by 1000 meters.) We were given five grid coordinates to find in two and a half hours. If you reach the coordiate, you will find a box with a numbe or letter on it, that is how we are scored. Most of the lieutenants at least found four.
Friday, we moved onto TA-8, an area more than seven grid squares in size. Now we have six points to find in four hours. The increased time is due to the immense size of the training area. After I was done, I retraced my steps on the map and found I had traveled a little more than 8 miles. This does not, however take into account all of the backtracking and searching for those damn boxes. I actually fell into the river on my first box, only half an hour into the four hours. A log I was using to cross broke as I was crossing and I fell in up to my knees. Not a great way to spend the day; soaked and cold.
As I was nearing drop dead time on Friday (a previously established time which all of us must be done by in order to get a score) I was still short two boxes of my six and was more than two kilometers from the command post. I had to haul ass or I wouldn't get in by drop dead time. In 40 minutes, I found two boxes and made the haul all the way back to the CP. I was either running or walking fast the entire time. After I found the last box, I checked my map for the dirction to the CP, whipped out my compass, and took off running. I just did make it.
The difficulty with land navigation is that you have to take a flat map with a bunch of lines on it and translate that into what you see on the ground. Then you throw in the inherent inaccuracies of a man made map and you have an adventure. I lost twenty minutes looking for a road intersection that was not really there. On the map, there were two roads intersecting another. In reality there was only one. Oh well, I made it anyway.
We has classes all week on land nav and then they threw us into the woods on Thursday. That is the TBS preferred method of instruction; cram your brain with info for a few days and then throw you to the wolves. Didn't quite get it? Too bad, time to go lieutenant!
Thursday was our first practical application of our skills, we headed out into TA-5, a training area a little more than one grid square in size. ( A grid square is marked on the map, it indicates a square 1000 meters by 1000 meters.) We were given five grid coordinates to find in two and a half hours. If you reach the coordiate, you will find a box with a numbe or letter on it, that is how we are scored. Most of the lieutenants at least found four.
Friday, we moved onto TA-8, an area more than seven grid squares in size. Now we have six points to find in four hours. The increased time is due to the immense size of the training area. After I was done, I retraced my steps on the map and found I had traveled a little more than 8 miles. This does not, however take into account all of the backtracking and searching for those damn boxes. I actually fell into the river on my first box, only half an hour into the four hours. A log I was using to cross broke as I was crossing and I fell in up to my knees. Not a great way to spend the day; soaked and cold.
As I was nearing drop dead time on Friday (a previously established time which all of us must be done by in order to get a score) I was still short two boxes of my six and was more than two kilometers from the command post. I had to haul ass or I wouldn't get in by drop dead time. In 40 minutes, I found two boxes and made the haul all the way back to the CP. I was either running or walking fast the entire time. After I found the last box, I checked my map for the dirction to the CP, whipped out my compass, and took off running. I just did make it.
The difficulty with land navigation is that you have to take a flat map with a bunch of lines on it and translate that into what you see on the ground. Then you throw in the inherent inaccuracies of a man made map and you have an adventure. I lost twenty minutes looking for a road intersection that was not really there. On the map, there were two roads intersecting another. In reality there was only one. Oh well, I made it anyway.
// posted by Josh @ 2/05/2005 04:36:00 PM 
