On Feb 24, 8:38*pm, Dave LaCourse wrote:
On Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:49:33 -0800 (PST), riverman





wrote:
Since we're on the topic on the GPS thread, I thought it might be
interesting to share some navigation tricks people have picked up in
their travels.

My favorite one is for finding a good approximation of direction using
the moon:
If the moon is visible (and is not full), then if you draw a line
through the 'points', that line will run very close to North-South.
You should mentally continue that line across the sky as if you were
drawing inside a bowl, and where it hits the horizon is North and
South. Similarly, if you draw the line bisecting the moon across the
'waist', THAT line runs east-west. Any extremely bright stars you see
on that E-W line will be planets.

--riverman

d;o)

Yeah, and another is that the sun rises in the east and sets in the
west. *

A friend and I went into the jungle in Panama without our topos and a
compass. *No sweat. *All we needed to do was find the sun about 6 or 7
pm, keep it on our right, and we would find our way back to the dirt
road where my truck was parked. *Riiiiight! *We had forgotten about
the triple canopy of the Panamanian jungle. *There was light, but you
could not find the sun. *We estimated where it was, but if we missed
the road, we would have at least a ten mile hike to the canal, or
about a five mile hike to the Chagres River. *We estimated we were
three miles from the road when it was time to leave. *We finally found
our way out by the sound of an occasional truck on the dirt road.
What should have taken an hour took more than two. *You don't wanna be
in the jungle at night without a flashlight. *We never went again
without one *and* a good topo map.

Dave- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Yeah, then there's those 'real life' factors. :-)

You mention a good point, and another one of my favorite navigation
tricks. The sun is due west EVERYWHERE in the world at 6pm (give or
take a little for daylight savings time, and where you are in the time
zone). In the summer, that means the sun is above the horizon at 6,
and for many places it has already set by 6, but nonetheless...at 6pm
its due west and at 6am its due east.

That makes it very easy to tell direction if you know the time. If its
due west at 6pm, and due south at noon, then if its 3pm, the sun will
be in the SW, etc. There is a handy trick for finding direction using
the hands of an analog watch, but many people have digital watches, so
this method is useful.

But of course, you gotta be able to see the sun...

--riverman