Thread: Sat nav- GPS Maps Star shots

Collecting data at sea (lobster): GPS decimal lat and long.

If I'm driving the boat / setting the pots: triangulating landmarks, just as accurate as gps.

Collecting data on land (freshwater fish surveys) GPS eastings and northings.

Navigating out in the boonies on foot: 1:25,000 topo maps, have a compass somewhere but never used it.

Navigating in the car: Country Vicroads.

Did have an eye opener 18 months ago doing a 'locum' fish job up at Ned's corner driving the scientist around.

She was doing the nav with her phone, dunno which app, and it was amazingly predictive and accurate. Little tracks going every which way.

The problem with that is that you can't get a big picture in your mind of the layout of all the sites we did and their relationship to each other.

DL

Years ago, when I trapped fur for a living in our NZ bush. I used topo maps, compass, flora and a dog called Hag.

This was back in the day when GPS was not the cheap consumer item it is today. Walk the terrain on the ground and translate this to the map and confirm with a compass when at a high point. I can still read a topo map and translate this to what the country will look like on arrival = "...around two more bends in the stream and I head up the ridge on the left".

Only time I had 'issues' was in an area where the ridgelines became wide and almost plateau-like. This was a series of ridges where there were large tracts of land that had many slight rises and falls under 20m much of the terrain and this fell between the 20m contour lines on the map and when surrounded in deep bush and walking about in the low cloud it was no easy feat to follow the terrain. Easy to lose a sense of it (terrain) and end up in the wrong catchment. This was the case when laying out a poison/trap line the first time. Looking at the growth of epiphytes and the lichen on the trees helped with direction and prevailing wind up valleys showed on the tops of the flagged distorted tree tops which revealed where the valleys were on one side of the plateau or the other. A couple of times up there I had to watch and follow the Hag when telling her to find 'home'. A couple of trips in and my poison/trap line was becoming clearer as my flour/milk powder-based baits were showing. Following seasons of course were easier as old bait lines were still 'visible' if you knew what you were looking at and familiarity was used but the first winter was interesting.

Hi,
If you are ever in Woomera, have a look at Len Beadle's working navigation notebook. It is in the museum there.
The maths and astronomical calculations pencilled across the pages is mind bending.
Cheers

In the '70s we used Topo maps for Survey reconn, a lot of the time to locate old, army Trig Stations, established in the '40s.

I had a similar experience to Windsock, with losing touch with the rise and fall of my surroundings. However, my problem was not cloud, but lantana.
This was on Mt. Ghrooman Bille, a rather long mountain, West of Gympie, Qld.
We had to walk in from the vehicle for about an hour and then proceeded to brush hook our way up a ridge, to the top of the mount. This took a couple of days, from memory.
On reaching an open area, on the top of the ridge, I used a compass and map to do a quick Trilateration and then used an Helio mirror to confirm our position, by sending a sun flash or two, to another party (on Mothar Mountain, I think?)

They then advised, very roughly, of how far we had to go along the top of Mt. G B, to get near the summit. We packed the gear up and returned to the vehicle before dark.

The next day, my workmate and I spent six hours clearing through 20' high lantana for a distance of around 300 metres. The following day we carried on for another few hundred metres until my workmate dropped vertically, about 3 metres, into the lantana.
Now, I found this somewhat amusing, as you would, but what had happened was, that the lantana was so thick, we were actually walking on it and nowhere near the ground level. Another day done.
The next day, we arranged to have someone on Mothar to guide us to what looked like the summit of Mt GB. It turned out that we had spent the last day, needlessly clearing through lantana, as we were well passed the highest point, which would have been the most likely spot for the Trig.
With the remote party guiding us to what appeared to be the summit, we eventually located the Trig beacon, a 15' high tripod with four vanes on top. The lantana was so thick, we had cut within 5 metres of it, had not seen it and kept cutting.

This is where GPS is GOOD!.......................but I love my maps.

Hi,
Wandering about in the mist on a featureless flat summit looking for the climb down is so much more fun without a gps. Not!
Cheers