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Taking a Bearing from your Map made easy

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Tags: Dave Canterbury,Survival,Bushcraft,Archery,Pathfinder,Navigation,The pathfinder Store

Video Transcription

okay guys from Dave Canterbury the Pathfinder school we are going to continue with our navigation series a little bit here what we're going to talk about now is we're going to talk about plugging a bearing in our compass from our map we're not going to talk about legs or routes we're going to talk about one single bearing one single heading and then we're going to talk about pacing later so that we can do dead reckoning and we'll talk about things like resection so we can figure out where we're at on a map if we don't know but for now we're going to assume that we know we're out on the map and we're going to shoot one bearing and plug it into our compass to use for travel from point A to point B stay with me guys okay so we have our map layout on the ground now as a quick review the first thing we're gonna do is we're going to orientate our map to orientate our map so that our compass matches our map we have to do two things number one we have to adjust our declination and we talked about that in earlier videos we know that it's six degrees so we're going to move our compass six degrees or about three marks and that will line us up now I want to show you a little trick on that real quick that you can think about here is your declination diagram all right I'm gonna zoom in on that just a little bit real quick before would you do this I want to show you guys a little hillbilly trick here if our compass has a clear face plate on it and we lay our compass on top of our declination diagram and we line our lines up in our compass on the inside of our bezel ring with that North arrow then all we really need to do is turn that compass until the angle matches in other words this angle and that angle are parallel to the angle if we look at that that should be about three once we do that we're good so if you can't figure out the bezel ring on your compass or maybe it only goes in increments of 20 or whatever the case may be you've got a cheaper type compass but it's got a clearer Buzzle ring on it and it's got lines on it like this one does underneath on the underneath side you can put those lines get that thing at true noir at North on the bezel ring line those lines up right on top of your grid North line and then turn them so that they're at the same angle as your declination line in this case we have six degrees of westerly declination so if I turn this to where that angle matches and I'm right over the top of that compass so I can see it okay then I'm good so again if I put this two north and I move it here if I move that just enough that those angles are the same I should be able to move that compass straight over on top and it should be right on that line and it is so now I know without even looking at this that I'm pretty close now according to my compass that's still a little bit off but it's gonna be a lot closer than if you have to just guess because you don't have anything on your bezel ring okay so once we have that done we want to orientate the map to the terrain now I know I'm staying on this hilltop but this Maps just thrown on the ground and it may not be exactly the way it should be so what I've got to do is I've got to figure out where the North line is on this map and this is north-south okay so this direction is up and that's the north so what I'm going to do is I'm going to have my declination set in my compass which we just did a second ago I'm going to lay this on a North line right in the corner so I have a line underneath the compass a line going along the side of the compass and then I'm going to rotate the map until the needles in the doghouse once I do that that map matches my terrain that I'm looking at so now I'm standing on this hilltop and there should be another hilltop that's a little bit lower right straight off to me add a little bit of an angle and I know there is okay so I know we're right right now now I can use my compass to take a bearing to figure out where I want to go on this map very simple okay now here's the part that might be a little bit confusing what we've done is we've not only set the declination or a compass and we rotated our map until we had the North arrow in the doghouse to orientate the map but that really didn't orientate the map I really didn't orientate the compass to the map it really orientated the map to the compass because we already had that six degree differential in there so this map is really setting six degrees off the map is now setting it magnetic north with the differential plugged in so now we don't have to worry about that anymore unless we move the map so if we're going to take a bearing off this map laying on the ground right now we don't have to worry about that differential anymore it's already been compensated for when we move the map so now all we really have to do is figure out where we want to go if we're on this hilltop using the same example as before and we want to travel to this wetland area all we really have to do now is lay our compass on the map in the middle of this hilltop that'll put about wore out into the middle of the wetland area where we want to go if we're not going to use any kind of a chair rail or anything like that all right we're not going to use any type of handrails or anything like that we just want a straight line bearing we can lay this compass right on here rotate our bezel ring until the North arrow is in the doghouse now all we have to do is pick up our compass and start walking and we should end up in that wetland area let's walk through that one more time okay so walking through this real quick one more time we have the 6 degree declination plugged into our compass we have a 6 degree westerly declination we have it marked at 6 on our compass we've moved counterclockwise if we take this map and we put our compass baseplate on a grid square in the corner so that the corners line up on the bottom of our base plate and the side of our base plate and we rotate this map till the needles in a doghouse we have now accounted for our declination difference we've taken care of that it's done we can pick our compass up off of this map as long as we don't move the map we can take our next bearing or make our legs or whatever we're going to do right off of this map so now what we're going to do is we know that we are on this hilltop and we want to travel to this wetland area we're going to lay our compass right on top of it with a straight line between the two we're going to line up our bezel ring so that the North arrows and a dog house again and that is the bearing that we're going to follow if we turn left we're gonna be out of the doghouse if we turn right we're gonna be out of the doghouse as long as we keep that thing straight we are going to go exactly where we wanted to go okay guys one Dave Canberra from the Pathfinder school and I hope that that was easy enough for you to understand basically that makes it very easy to navigate if you have a map you can lay that map on the ground orientate the map adjust for the GM angle right off the bat and then you can't lay your course on that map right on the ground in front of you and then follow the bearings and you can use the same leapfrogging type method that we talked about with a visual bearing as long as you have that bearing plugged in you can pick that compass up now aim it off into the distance that's something you can see and that becomes your new heading it's going to be in the exact same asmath line close your compass walk to it open your compass do the same thing again and just keeping that distance just an object in exactly the same degree bearing line that you had plugged into your compass to begin with and you'll still walk a straight line and you'll get to your object I'm Dave Canberra the Pathfinder school I appreciate everything you do for me for my school for my family my friends affiliates and sponsors I'll be back with another video in this series as soon as I can thanks guys you

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wildernessoutfitters

wildernessoutfitters

From the lore of bushcraft to all things related to self-sustainability, the Pathfinder vision is to pass on the knowledge of outdoor self-reliance. Providing basic to advanced self-reliance training and survival gear, our goal is to offer both practical knowledge and survival gear that will stand the test of time. From emergency preparedness to sustainability, the Pathfinder way is to share and educate.

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