![]() Unfortunately, it’s a way that I've likely lost after a decade of using Google Maps for navigation on my iPhone. What I didn't realize then is that this practice of land navigation was forming my mind and thoughts in a certain way. It’s easy to panic and get lost (especially when it’s a night course), so successful candidates have to keep their wits about them the whole time. It's a cognitive competence test and most courses don't give you much time to practice. Third, you have to take what you're seeing on instruments and paper and relate it to the real world in real-time. Second, there's a ton of variability: Each tester must make it through the forest on their own. First, it’s an individual event, so every tester’s got to get by on skill. The Army uses land navigation as a test for a few reasons. Looking back, I don't know how I made it to some of them. I covered dozens and dozens of miles looking for those points, day and night. Having completed land navigation courses in South Carolina, Georgia, Upstate New York, and Washington, I could say that the Star Course was the most difficult in terms of distance, time, and density of vegetation (a bigger factor than you might imagine) than I'd ever come across. If you have difficulty finding one of your points, that could be as far as you get that day. The Star Course is a one-by-one event, meaning you get one point per checkpoint and there’s a “point sitter” at each one ready to give you your next location. Most Army land navigation courses give out a number of points at the beginning and let the tester determine the best sequence for finding them. (Brett McKay at Art of Manliness does a pretty good step-by-step of how this all works between the tools. Land navigation is a key component of just about every major combat-focused qualification course in the US Army and typically involves using a 1:50,000 map, a military protractor, and a lensatic compass to find given points at remote spots in the woods on a timed course both day and night. As a candidate in Special Forces Assessment & Selection (SFAS)-the tryouts for the Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC or “Q-Course”)-in the fall of 2006, I had the pleasure of testing my land navigation skills on Camp Mackall’s Star Course, the legendary patch of Carolina pine and sand just north of the Rockingham Speedway and southwest of Pinehurst golf resort. Check out his excellent newsletter on planning, mental models and applying military lessons to the broader public, The Quartermaster. Our friend Brady Moore (BJM) is a former Army Special Forces officer (Green Beret) now working in technology in NYC. After the positive response to John Peabody’s WITI edition on his Outward Bound solo, we wanted to delve a bit more into the topic of navigation. Warner, “Browse by Maker: Felsenthal,” National Museum of American History Physical Sciences Collection: Navigation. After the company ceased operations in approximately 1976, it provided a large sample of its products to the Smithsonian. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics, particularly during World War II (when the firm was known as G. The Felsenthal Instruments Company was the leading supplier of mathematical instruments to the U.S. The maker's mark is near the vertex: 4 SOUND SECONDS (/) FELSENTHAL INSTRUMENTS CO. It is divided by five-hundredths and marked by ones from 14 to 1. ![]() A scale for THOUSANDS OF YARDS 1/25000 is along the right edge of the protractor. Finally, a scale for MILS is divided by tens and marked by hundreds from 1000 to 100. It is divided by minutes and marked by fives from 55° to 0°. The scale is labeled: TIME INTERVAL, SECONDS and MIDPOINTS FOR 4-SECOND SUB-BASE, 1/25000.Ī scale marked DEGREES is further inside the arc. The outer edge of the protractor's arc is divided by hundredths and marked by tenths from +3.4 to +0.1 (in black print) and from -0.1 to -3.4 (in red print). Thus, this clear plastic protractor, which is in the shape of a sixth-circle, permitted the user to plot the distance traveled by a projectile from the time that elapsed before the sound of the projectile was heard. Before computerized and satellite navigation equipment was in wide use, protractors were employed in military applications, including positioning artillery. Or, they may make measurements in other scales for angles, such as radians. For instance, they may be combined with other drawing instruments, such as rulers or templates for flow chart components. While many protractors simply measure angles in degrees, others have been adapted for more specialized contexts.
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