Night Land-Nav Tips?

[Jakal]

Get a star chart and know where Orion, the Big and Little Dippers are you can usually plot courses around that. Get the star chart that moves and will show you what the stars look like at each hour of darkness. They make them for the Northern and Southern Hemisphere.
2 star charts and you can navaigate anywhere in the world.

http://www.skymaps.com/

http://www.skymaps.com/store/cat04.html#firefly_deluxe



Get into a big field with no city lights or obstructing tree-line. It takes a little but if you pratice with it, you will see what I am talking about.


and wear eye protection.

[Kchen986]

Yea, I definitely need more practice finding constellations and identifying the North star.

This past weekend, there was sufficient ambient lighting, so I shot really really short azimuth's (5 meters or so). This really helped keep me on track in the dark. Ended up walking right on top of one of my points. Going to need more practice, though.

[RogerinTPA]

Lots of great tips in this thread.

Along with trusting your pace count, compass, plotting a course encompassing terrain features you can recognize (with your feet and center of gravity), and using a backstop, I used a "deliberate off shoot". Shoot an azimuth left or right of your target to a good terrain feature, then you know which direction the target is in relation to that terrain feature. It made tactical land nav a breeze for me and help with setting up OPs and Rally Points on patrols. For lighting, we used a glow stick or red/blue lens flashlight under a poncho, to plot courses.

[mikeross506]

Yep nothing like walking into a branch to ruin your night.

I can handle the branches. It's the unseen spiderwebs that cause my stress.

[WillC]

Big +1 to the "deliberate off shoot", eye pro and Backstops ... maybe a +2 to the Backstops, they will save you, or i'll give you your money back.
You don't truly realize the value of the Backstop until you dive at night, and I brought that mentality to LandNav, dark makes your senses deceive you and nothing looks like it should.

If you have the ability I also think an altimiter works awesome for doing contour nav'ing... not a bad way to do Backstops either.

Then again, a GPS is pretty good too

[QuietShootr]

Pacecount, backstops, and keeping track of where you are are the basics. A lot of people overuse flashlights. You actually only need a little red light to read your map. Unless it's pitch black you ou can get used to moving without one actually have better SA than if you were using a light everywhere.

My biggest tip, though, is eye protection. Clear lenses will save your eyes from brush. It's one of those things you think is gay until you have a stick poking into your eye. Ask me how I know. I use Oakley half jackets and just snap in the clear lenses if I'm packing around at night in the woods.

****in' A on all counts. A few things I used to do back in the day -

I used to use an ASP LED keychain light in red that could be activated by biting down on it. I kept it on my field dogtag chain. When I needed to look at the map, I would just cover my head and shoulders with an old OD plastic/cloth poncho and get down in prone, and I had a little light-tight hood to do what I needed to do.

Eye protection is a VERY good idea. I started using half-jacket clears also after nearly losing an eye one night.

Another (stupid) safety tip: don't use spray DEET next to your face in the dark

[QuietShootr]

Me too, I got my EIB in Germany, boars were part of the terrain.

GRUNEY PIG!!!!!

[reccerecon]

Use a yellow highlighter to draw over your route, and have a blue light, the little Gerber lights work nice. It makes finding shit on your map a bit easier. I got this form the Ranger Rick books at the PX, there's a lot of good landnav tips in those. Something else I learned from them is put some white med tape under the numers on your protractor, and put a small hole through the center of the protractor then tie in a 10" piece of strong string. The string should lay on top of the protractor not the bottom when your done. This is handy from plotting, but not as good as the card idea at night. Practice landnav as much as you can, not only when you have to.

[johnpuga1982]

Before you get moving, make a route plan. Make checkpoints on the map at regular intervals, measure distances and azimuths, and write that shit down on paper. That way, you'll be doing a series of short movements, rather than one super-long one. Also, when marking on a map, use pencil, and make the smallest dots possible to get the most accurate azimuths.

I really like this tip. I'm gonna try it this weekend.

[Wake27]

Make small dots, but circle them large enough to spot easily. And stay calm, that shit can be like drowning.