The responses will be general directions such as North, South, East South East and similar. If you are lucky enough to be able to pick out a landmark that’s along the bearing, and also on the other side of the obstacle, you have nothing to worry about, just go around the obstacle and get back on course by reaching the landmark and aligning the red end of the magnetic needle over the orienteering arrow, and continue walking. Stop, add 120 degrees to your initial bearing, pick out a landmark along that bearing and walk another 15 steps toward it, stop and once again increase your bearing by 120, pick out a third landmark and again walk 15 steps. Let’s say you are hiking in Utah where the declination is 13 degrees east. Make a minimal and maximal 2-digit number from digits of two 3-digit numbers. The term triangulation is incorrect: this technique is called resectioning and involves the intersection of any two linear features, which can be 2 compass directions but also a road and an elevation, etc. Simply look at your compass and the straight line across the dial (the number on the opposite side) is the return bearing. At night, place two sticks in the ground lined up with the North Star, with the taller one to the north of the shorter. Say you are hiking and decide to stash a water bottle part way along the trail so you can drink it on your return trip and avoid carrying it for the whole hike. Typically one double step (that is just counting the steps of one of your feet, while ignoring the other) is about five feet. You can also golf this a lot more, just by removing all the extra whitespace, shortening variable names and declarations, and removing redundant variables altogether. All input numbers will be greater than or equal to 0, and less than 360. Take your compass to an empty parking lot or field and mark a spot. Also always remember that a GPS unit is a delicate, battery powered device that can fail or be easily damaged. Was AGP only ever used for graphics cards? Once the steps are up, turn your body to align the magnetic needle back over the orienteering arrow (thus turning 90 degrees for a fourth and final time), and you will be back on course. I have rock climbed at Stone Hill Montana, ice climbed in Ouray Colorado, scaled Denali in Alaska, explored the Copper Canyons of Mexico, skied the Trinity Chutes of Mt. In other words you will need a compasses manufactured for use in the part of the world you intend to use it. Note, some compasses, include an inclination gauge (not covered in this article) by which you can easily measure the angle. It would be seen as a little set of arrows showing true, magnetic and grid north. Contour Lines - Terrain 2 If your compass is declined East, add the declination to find true North. Figure 4 above has magnetic north lines drawn on it, and thus no adjustment were needed to use the map bearing in the field. Say you are on a hiking trail, and to the west you can identify a mountain peak. The final three columns show three common naming conventions: No "by" avoids the use of "by" with fractional points; "USN" is the system used by the US Navy; and "RN" is the Royal Navy system. The quarter winds are expressed with an Italian phrase, "Quarto di X verso Y" (pronounced [ˈkwarto di X ˈvɛrso Y][10][11][12] one quarter from X towards Y), or "X al Y" (X to Y) or "X per Y" (X by Y). See Figure 4. The directional names are routinely associated with the degrees of rotation in the unit circle, a necessary step for navigational calculations (derived from trigonometry) and/or for use with Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) receivers. For example if you are told that a landmark is SE of your location, you know that is 135 degrees, or conversely if you know you need to go West but you calculate the bears as 90 degrees you will instinctively realize the bearing is wrong, as West is at 270 degrees (turn your compass around, you have committed the classic 180 degree error). Read, The Effort Scale of Highpointing the Fifty US States. Clearly, the smaller the scale, the more detail is revealed. One he has cleared the obstacle talk him into position along your original bearing. Note such things as landmarks, bearings between landmarks, distances and elevations. Geokov Education For example some areas are known to have winds that blow from the west. There are no irregularities to trip over; the closest principal wind always comes first, the more distant one second, for example: north-by-east is "Quarto di Tramontana verso Greco"; and northeast-by-north is "Quarto di Greco verso Tramontana". Each of the 96 fractional points can be named in two ways, depending on which of the two adjoining whole points is used, for example, N3/4E is equivalent to NbE1/4N. When did the Altair move ROM to the top of memory? You may have heard directions given in terms like NNW or ESE, those types of directions are a result of distinguishing degrees in 22.5 degree increments resulting in the 16 traditional compass directions. Mark the tip of the shadow with a pebble or scratch in the dirt; try to make the mark as small as possible so as to pinpoint the shadow's tip. As a mnemonic device, it is useful to think of "X by Y" as a shortcut for the phrase "one quarter-wind, This page was last edited on 27 October 2020, at 03:36. Reverse Bearing: When hiking in and back out from somewhere one should know who to calculate a reverse (or opposite) bearing. To convert degrees to compass directions, I first divide the compass into 16 sectors of 22.5 degrees each. Now, read the bearing at the compasses index line, and follow the bearing in the field! @WallyWest There be no answers in "R" to your previous question (there weren't even any in "C"!) Does it flow east, or northwest? If you are lucky enough to have one of the maps north/south grid lines visible under the compass housing you can align the meridian lines on you compass with the maps north/south grid line as you turn the housing until the orienteering arrow points to the top of the map. If is set to the correct time, simply point the hour hand at the sun, and in that position, the point halfway between the current hour and the 12, is south. If you enjoyed this article, perhaps you would like to read another article by this same author? Aiming Off: When navigating to a target, if you realize that it could be easily missed if you get slightly off course one way, whereas missing the target the opposite way wouldn’t be a problem, you should use a trick known as aiming off. Portolan charts also colour-coded the compass winds: black for the eight principal winds, green for the eight half-winds, and red for the sixteen quarter-winds. Look at the compass needle, and note the difference between its bearing and true north, the difference is declination. I bought a compass but haven't really used it yet, though I haven't needed it yet either. The latitude and longitude grid allows us to calculate an exact point using these lines as X axis and Y axis coordinates. Usage: h 219 outputs "Southwest by south SWbS". To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. Current declinations can be had at the NGDC website. Edit: Some bytes off exploiting symmetry (as I've seen in @bazzargh solution). The link to this tool will appear as: angle from compass point (point) to degrees (°) conversion. The nearest of the eight directions is Southwest at 225 degrees, which is five degrees lower, and the nearest cardinal direction is West. Of course if you are plotting a field bearing on to a map do the opposite: that is ADD east declination to a magnetic (field) bearing and SUBTRACT west declination from a magnetic (field) bearing. We say areas to the left of the line have east declination and those to the right have west declination. The traditional mariner's wind names were expressed in Italian, or more precisely, the Italianate Mediterranean lingua franca common among sailors in the 13th and 14th centuries, which was principally composed of Genoese (Ligurian), mixed with Venetian, Sicilian, Provençal, Catalan, Greek and Arabic terms from around the Mediterranean basin. Very late, I know. Longitude lines run north and south intersecting at the north and south poles. Try this. UTM Different directional compasses bear different markings. There is a tool on the Internet that I like to use to make my pseudo maps called ACME Mapper 2.0. Likewise, at 30°N the star is 30 degrees above the horizon, and so on. Heavy dew indicates dry weather to follow. In Chinese, Gaelic and less commonly in Japanese, the part meaning east or west precedes the part meaning north or south.