Basic navigational skills badly missing

SteveO said:

Sorry Simon, but that's "tabloid dismissiveness"; to get an arrow to
display on a GPS at all you have to tell it where you want to go... to
do that you have to know how to read a map (ergo navigate); how else
do you derive the co-ordinates you then need to program into the GPS?

You /can/ just throw money at it and click the summits to visit in the
mapping software and download them to the GPS. Most people can find the
summit of Ben Nevis on a map, many of them can work out a GR, but that
is *not* the same as "navigation" which is about route choice between
where you are and where you're going as well as those endpoints.

Many people are not adept at using maps to select good routes.

Quoted message said:

The mobile phone has prolly become _the_ tool (sic.) that singularly
has lured most of those who get into trouble into the situation where
they are endangered.

Probably the case. Though anything where you can throw money at
something well enough marketed at Solving All Your Problems may
aggravate matters. The eTrex user manual (if you can call it that) is
an interesting document, going on all about how easy and fun life is
with your eTrex, rather than really telling you much about navigation...

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net [email hidden] http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

In article <[email hidden]>,
SteveO@?.?.invalid writes

Quoted message said:

to get an arrow to
display on a GPS at all you have to tell it where you want to go... to
do that you have to know how to read a map (ergo navigate); how else
do you derive the co-ordinates you then need to program into the GPS?

Save a waypoint at your starting point (very easy to do and one of the
first things the tutorial in the manual will tell you to try). Ask it to
show you the way back to that point. No map required :-(

--

Dominic Sexton

SteveO said:

But, perhaps, outside their ability to put [paper?] skills into
practice?

If that were really a problem the emergency services would have a lot
more work any time there's bad visibility. The hills are potentially
dangerous places, and you can die there. But your main risk is driving
there and back... is it "daft" not to have a car with ABS and airbags
and 5 point safety harnesses, and drive it in a full-face crash helmet
and flameproof suit?

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net [email hidden] http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

In article <[email hidden]>, Paul Saunders
<[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

GPS navigation is standard in modern aircraft.

And they generally do not retrofit them to older aircraft. I wouldn't be
surprised if there were still more commercial airliners out there
without GPS than with.

--

Dominic Sexton

In article <[email hidden]>, Graham Seed
<[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

"Paul Saunders" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

But if you've got a GPS, and more importantly, if you know how to use it
properly, then you *can* go to places that you might otherwise not risk
going.

I think I could go anywhere in this country without gps, but your argument
would be true for vast barren wastelands like deserts.

Before GPS was commonly available I spent a lot of time driving round
'featureless' deserts as did many other folks working in oil
exploration. I can only remember two cases of people getting lost. One
where they were following a well used track through the area and missed
the point to turn off.

The other was more entertaining. A surveyor was out having a scout near
the edge of our work area and had one of them there newfangled GPS units
with him - the GPS was the first one most of us had seen. As the
constellation was far from complete (1990) it would only find four
satellites, and hence be able to compute a position, for a few hours a
day.

Our intrepid surveyor misjudged his route in the SW corner of our area
and drove north up the west of the area thinking he would soon recognise
some dunes in the NW corner and then make the short trip back to camp
from there.

He drove north for quite some time thinking he would soon be there and
if all else failed he would be able to get a GPS position at about dusk.
He stopped driving at dusk and setup the GPS. When it told him he was
about 30 miles north of our area he was more than a little shocked.

When he finally got back to camp he readily admitted that he would not
have been so nonchalant about his direction nor continued driving for so
long if he had not got the GPS with him.

Good job he made it back into radio range or we would have been looking
for him where he was last heard from in the SW!

--

Dominic Sexton

Chris Gilbert said:

SteveO said:

You say you're a sailor; you ever been offshore when the fog has come
in and wanted to find your harbour? I have and a GPS is the only tool
that would do that for you.

Marine GPS is integrated with real-time mapping and position
indication.

_only_ if that's the level of equipment you own! The scenario I
mentioned of my being at sea at getting home in fog via GPS was by
using a bog-standard GPS.

Quoted message said:

As you imply, absolutely priceless but it offers a level of
sophistication way beynd the capabilities of most handheld GPS which are
fairly simple positioning audit devices and require a level of skill and practice to
use properly.

A basic level of skill of being able to input a waypoint is a minimum
that's required, and the level of sophistication of the equipment, as
I mentioned above, does not have to be top-of-the-range ;-)

Quoted message said:

A GPS per se does not increase the owners ability to save themeslves from
the Darwin effect. Knowledge of how to use the tool appropriately in the conditions
is what is required and the same goes for a map and compass.

That's a given. Tautology in fact ;-)

Peter Clinch wrote "Many people are not adept at using maps to select
good routes."

That's an indefensible statement!!!!!

Many /people/ - statistical survey?

/good/ routes - in whose eyes?

David.

Peter Clinch wrote "Many people are not adept at using maps to select
good routes."

That's an indefensible statement!!!!!

Many /people/ - statistical survey?

/good/ routes - in whose eyes?

David.

Peter Clinch said:

Paul Rooney said:

I defy anyone to use pacing with any degree of accuracy in deep,
boulder-strewn heather.

The you choose a different route!!???

Its a no brainer, you're (presumably because you're pacing) trying to
get yourself out of a sticky situation so why put yourself into a
trickier one?

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Often you can't maintain anything like a
straight line even for a few yards. Ditto with saltmarsh,
criss-crossed with channels

You just plain wouldn't be pacing in salt-marsh.

Quoted message said:

Indeed the case that there are many instances when a GPS is a frankly
better tool than a compass and pacing, or whatever.

Agreed. Can I steal your clarification Pete and suggest that it also
extends to choosing your escape route and your method of determining
how best to effect your escape.

Pacing in a salt-marsh, ordinary marsh, or peat hag for that matter?
Gimme a break.

Gordon said:

[email hidden] wrote

Quoted message said:

Mike said:

So a GPS would would have been no use to us,

Hey, my case is that GPS is harmless. Not that it's especially useful.
As a sailor I'm amazed people on land full of features would even
bother with it half the time.

Most of us don't, most of the time. You only need one when you are
unsure of your position, but I like to look at the walk plotted on a map
afterwards, and to know the distance, time, height gain etc.

Yeah, that's exactly my take on it. Vaguely useful if you've got it. No
real drama if you haven't.

The whole idea that GPS is dangerous because if you misused it it could
be dangerous is insane.

Like refusing to get on a Bicycle because riding bicycles into erupting
volcanos is dangerous....

On Tue, 29 Nov 2005 11:09:02 +0000, Paul Rooney <[email hidden]>
wrote:

[...]

Quoted message said:

(My own opinion is that the reason why the arguments go on so long is
that so many people are, as Paul has said, Luddites.)

Well we just need Roger to agree now and then the four of us will be
in complete agreement on the point 🙂

Best wishes,
--
,,
(**)PeeWiglet~~
/ \ / \

Paul Rooney said:

300 squid?! That's almost a month's beer money! But you can buy very
good ones a lot cheaper than that. Mind you, some people don't think
twice about spending that on a jacket (though it's more than the cost
of all my walking clothes put together, and they are up to the job).

What I want from a GPS, among other things, is to be able to guide me
to specific places in small French villages, so I'd need mapping as a
starter. Then I'd need the mapping to be upgradeable, because these
villages don't appear on standard basemaps with any detail, so I'd be
looking for something with connectivity and sensible amounts of memory.
But then feature-creep sets in... for only another 20 quid I can get
<insert pseudo-desirable feature here>.

In short, the Magellan eXplorist 400 is pretty much the spec I'm after,
and by the time you add in a decent set of Western Europe maps then
it's around the 300 quid mark.

I know I can get an Etrex Legend with a basemap for around 200 quid,
but a nagging voice tells me that they are getting on a bit now and
something more up to date would be better. And it doesn't take memory
cards. Though it does have better screen resolution than the
eXplorist.

I suspect the rational thing would be to get a Legend with the mapping
and be done with it, but then, ultimately, another voice tells me that
I've managed this far without a GPS and I don't need one now. And the
annoying thing is that I know this voice is right...

Colin

I said:

I know I can get an Etrex Legend with a basemap for around 200 quid,

when I should have said 'with a detailed Western Europe map'. It comes
with a basemap as standard. Oops.

Colin

Dominic Sexton said:

In article <[email hidden]>,
SteveO@?.?.invalid writes

Quoted message said:

to get an arrow to
display on a GPS at all you have to tell it where you want to go... to
do that you have to know how to read a map (ergo navigate); how else
do you derive the co-ordinates you then need to program into the GPS?

Save a waypoint at your starting point (very easy to do and one of the
first things the tutorial in the manual will tell you to try). Ask it to
show you the way back to that point. No map required :-(

Aye, but if you think about it you're following the arrow on your GPS
which means you're not going to leave the carpark are you? ;-)

OK, flippant perhaps 🙂 but to store a waypoint and then get your GPS
to show you which direction to go in (assuming you've moved away from
the car park under your own initiative;-) still requires a certain
knowledge. I agree its arguable just how *much* knowledge is required
but the point I'm alluding to is that you're moving away from Joe
Numpty (fictional character) who gets his GPS out of its box, puts the
batteries in and wnaders off assuming all his problems are solved
(again, a fictional scenario).

SteveO said:

Quoted message said:

On flat ground maybe. You'd be pretty brave to trust GPS for blind nav
on a mountain in whiteout.

Why on earth do you say that, just to be argumentative while being
plain wrong at the same time? You Trollin?

The navigational aid capabilites are not diminished by visibility for
the human eye. You said yourself that a GPS tells you where you are.
When you can't see anything else what else are you going to use for
navigation?

Mainly ignorance. I've never been in a white out but I'd kind of
assumed that you had to sit tight rather than moving around.... At
least that's what Jo Simpson and Simon Yates said they'd wished they'd
done on TtV on Sunday night!

If you *had* to move around then GPS would obviously be required. How
else?

Quoted message said:

You say you're a sailor; you ever been offshore when the fog has come
in and wanted to find your harbour? I have and a GPS is the only tool
that would do that for you.

Of course but I kind of thought mountains were different with lot's of
unexpected dangers like crevasses and cliffs etc.

Peter Clinch said:

SteveO said:

But, perhaps, outside their ability to put [paper?] skills into
practice?

If that were really a problem the emergency services would have a lot
more work any time there's bad visibility.

Dunno Pete, was just trying to imagine a scenario where someone who's
skill levels would suggest they could effect a self-rescue (or
shouldn't be in trouble in the first place) but in reality they called
for help.

....the mobile phone is the new hill whistle.
(thank god, those whistles are worse than bl**dy useless;-)

On 29 Nov 2005 04:42:05 -0800, [email hidden] wrote:

[...]

Quoted message said:

Mainly ignorance. I've never been in a white out but I'd kind of
assumed that you had to sit tight rather than moving around.... At
least that's what Jo Simpson and Simon Yates said they'd wished they'd
done on TtV on Sunday night!

Much depends on where you are, though. They were at risk of falling to
their deaths, but in many places over here that risk is absent.

Quoted message said:

If you *had* to move around then GPS would obviously be required. How
else?

Well if you know exactly where you are, and decide where you want to
go, it's quite possible to take a bearing off the map, put it on the
compass and walk on it. Pacing and timing can be used to calculate
distance covered, although clearly the effectiveness of those methods
is going to be affected by the terrain. Much of the time, though, it
should be possible to have a pretty good idea of how far one has
worked on pacing alone. If it's possible to see things like walls as
well then the job becomes easier.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

You say you're a sailor; you ever been offshore when the fog has come
in and wanted to find your harbour? I have and a GPS is the only tool
that would do that for you.

Of course but I kind of thought mountains were different with lot's of
unexpected dangers like crevasses and cliffs etc.

Again, it depends on where you are 🙂

Best wishes,
--
,,
(**)PeeWiglet~~
/ \ / \

Quoted message said:

Mainly ignorance. I've never been in a white out but I'd kind of
assumed that you had to sit tight rather than moving around.... At
least that's what Jo Simpson and Simon Yates said they'd wished they'd
done on TtV on Sunday night!

If you *had* to move around then GPS would obviously be required. How
else?

Look at the map, decide where you want to go, take a bearing, get the
compass out, set it up to walk along the chosen bearing, and start
walking.

(In anticipation of at least one objection to this, being in a whiteout
doesn't mean you don't know where you are.)

Colin

Peewiglet <[email hidden]> wrote in
news:[email hidden]:

Quoted message said:

Also, and just to be clear, I'm not implying that I consider £70 tp be
a trivial sum, but I do think it's fairly reasonable for something
that could save a life (or potentially the life of a whole family).
Bearing in mind what many people spend on waterproofs, rucksacks,
boots, this/that/theother layers, maps, map cases, tents, mattresses
etc etc etc, I don't see it as disproportionate. The reality may be,
though, that they actually cost about twice as much as that, and I'd
certainly agree that that would put them into a totally different
'cost league'.

Tracklogs current prices
Geko 101 - £75
Geko 201 - £95
eTrex - £90

Not that I would recommend the 101 as it doesn't have a computer interface,
but if you are on a budget and you don't have a computer... hang on, in
that case you are not reading this 🙂

John

Peewiglet said:

Well if you know exactly where you are, and decide where you want to
go, it's quite possible to take a bearing off the map, put it on the
compass and walk on it. Pacing and timing can be used to calculate
distance covered, although clearly the effectiveness of those methods
is going to be affected by the terrain. Much of the time, though, it
should be possible to have a pretty good idea of how far one has
worked on pacing alone.

Known as estimating. ...but I was thinking that on a mountain you need
better than a "pretty good idea" where you are.

....but it seems I've got a poor idea of what a mountain is in this
context. I'm was thinking Annapurna and the OP was thinking Pen-y-fan!