Whilst preparing yourself for your trip of a lifetime you will undergo a certain amount of expedition training, whether it be yourself, some books and some woodland to practice in, or a professional course like we offer. Which ever method you choose, when it comes to the navigational section, please pay attention.
Some people are lucky and have a natural built-in compass and a good ‘eye’ for direction, however most need some practice and often get a little lazy thus falling victim to less traditional methods.
The Sat Nav and the GPS are, together, killing the art of navigation. In the right place and the right time a GPS can be an absolute god-send but 99% of the time it is a fancy gadget like this that is dulling our abilities to navigate by using more traditional methods.
A map doesn’t have batteries that will run out, the north star is always there and will never break (like wise the southern cross), the sun always rises and sets in the same place irrelevant of whether the US military plays with it.
If you have your eyes glued to the instructions on that LCD screen mounted on your dashboard your common-sense is also dulled and in one case in England it was dulled to the point of shear stupidity. A woman was told by the robotic voice on her sat nav to take the next road on the right, she then proceeded to turn onto a set of train tracks as she crossed them, telling police after that she thought that the opening was the road! On a more realistic note…. picture yourself driving across some barren wilderness or through a big city. The GPS packs in on you. You have been following that box of navigational wizardry ever since the day began….. do you now have any idea where you are? Were you keeping record of progress?
There are many GPS models available today and they all have such varied features. The main things to look out for, well I do, are battery life, waterproofing of some level and its toughness. If you do short missions away, or travel with a laptop, then being able to hook up to a PC is useful because you can plan out an entire trip and upload it into the unit.
My model of choice at the moment is the Garmin GPS 60. A decent, sturdy little beast that I have installed on my boat and can remove it to hit the road or wherever.
Expedition training can be given especially catered to the use of the GPS and its many functions as is now the recognition of the general reliability of the units but this is no excuse for not learning map and compass work as well.
S2Si can help you with any expedition training needs you might have whether it is survival, navigation, outdoor adventure sport, etc, or we will even pass you on to people we know in the industry just so we have peace of mind knowing you got the best expedition training for your specific needs.
Here is some more expedition training advice.
Tags: Expedition Training, Is expedition training important, Where can I get expedition training
