SFAS Land Navigation Tips

! Moving up
!! Route Planning!
Basically, you will travel using estimated distance, cardinal directions ("Southwest", not "223°"), bouncing between intersections of roads, draws, clearings, etc. Be smart! You will not want to beeline from point to point. You have to do what works for you, not necessarily what works for other people. The terrain walks and practical exercises will help you figure out what approaches you want to take.

Have several checkpoints per klick (1000m) to make sure you're on track.
* Use Backstops (terrain features that indicate when you have gone too far beyond your point) behind each checkpoint
Use Corridors and Handrails--like Backstops but to the sides.
* If you hit one you've veered to far, time to bounce back the other direction.
Use the Roads (Improved and Unimproved) as Checkpoints
* Not too close, you don't want to violate the rules. ("Parallel but don't handrail.")
* These usually form a backstop and a Corridor all at once.
* Use the strategic side of the terrain to protect yourself from deviating from the direction you expect to go.
Draws. The Hoffman course is all about those overgrown draws.
* Of course, some of the unimproved roads will not be on the map, and vice-versa (Five Points is an example). You will have to be aware of other terrain features and your distance traveled so you don't get distracted by spurious or missing unimproved roads.
* Don't bust 'em, if you can avoid it---especially at night. If you bust a draw at night you're either more awesome or more stupid than me.
* Close contour lines mean steep ground which means less water pooling which means less vegetation which means a better place to bust draws.
* Find the weak spots by handrailing them on your way around. Worst-case: you walk all the way around, Best case: you find a good crossing.
* Find places where other candidates have gone through. They exist, you just have to be patient enough to find them. Worst case you go all the way around the draw, but you probably can spot a good crossing before that.
* Check your compass frequently when going through a draw. Like every 20 steps. It is possible to fight for an hour to end up where you started
When practicing route planning, try writing everything down, and review it with a buddy. By the time you get to the real thing, you should be comfortable enough with Route Planning that you can just do it in your head every time.

!! Attack Points!
* Select a solid terrain feature or landmark so that if you can't find your point on the final approach you can just backtrack to the Attack Point and re-shoot.
* As close to the objective as possible, hopefully under 300m or so.
* From the Attack Point to Objective is the only time you'll really use Dead Reckoning (travelling a specific distance and direction).
* SLLS (Stop, Look, Listen, Smell) for your points. The point-sitters are crafty foxen.
* Smart search patterns. If you intentionally "aim off" right you only have to search to the left.
* A terrain feature beyond your objective that signals when you've gone too far.

!! Landmarks!
* Before exam day, you should at least know where these are:
** The TOC
** 3-wire Road
** 4-wire Road
** Puppy Palace
** Bowling Alley (plus the road that leads out of it to the North)
** Six Points
** Jurassic Park--big draw to the West
** Lookout tower (North of Jurassic Park)
** Five Points (South of Jurassic Park)
** Lake Bagget (and its authorized crossing)
** Scuba Road (and its dry crossing)
** "Dagobah", a.k.a., "The Great Lost North"
* Note all Happy Stakes. They are engineer stakes with a dogtag with a grid coordinate.
** If you observe them during the practice you can remember the spots later on
** They are better than GPS. There is no load time and they don't lose track of their satellites.

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SFAS Land Navigation Tips