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On 03/04/14 20:53, Gordon Henderson wrote:
My Dad did all the long distance walks - the first time the Pennine Way for Spina Bifida research when I was born - and later when he joined the T.A. he was assigned to do all the lectures on map-reading and orienteering. He also got me through the map reading component of my Gold Arrow in the Cubs :) I'm pretty sure he'd agree with the comments regarding batteries and dropping down a hole - or indeed dropping/falling on and breaking the SatNav. The only snag with a map is, if you lose visibility suddenly, unless you're absolutely sure where you were to start with, when you lose all visual clues you have nothing to base your compass reading and set a course from. With a SatNav it doesn't matter if you can't see anything as long as you can see /it/.On Thu, 3 Apr 2014, Kevin Peat wrote:On 3 April 2014 20:03:25 GMT+01:00, Adrian Midgley <amidgley@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:Extra skills are always handy but when I have been walking on the open moor and a thick fog comes in I would prefer a gps receiver to a paper map every time :]When I was navigating in the Highlands with 20m visibility in the snow GPS had not been launched. Knowing how to do it with map and compass is not to be disregarded. From Dr Adrian Midgley's handUntil the batterys go flat.When Galileo starts working [next year?] there will be 3 separate "GPS" networks to rely on which should make it pretty resilient. So massive solar flare, nuclear war or alien invasion notwithstanding I am fairly happy to rely on it.Until you drop it down a hole.Map & compass skills are good to have IMO. I used to teach them when I lived in Scotland - got me out of more than one pickle when munroing when the weather unnexpectedly changed - and once on Dartmoor when the foggy mizzle came down.However I did get a GPS for walking (on Dartmoor) - some little Garmin unit that took 3 x AAA's. Used it to do the 2 moors way a few years back, however it wasn't a moving map type - one of the early waypoint ones where you had to upload the waypoints into, so I had a copy of some commercial software to go with it. The batteries would just about last a day! Not sure it's any use now as I no-longer have the PoS software who lied to me on their website about the maps they would supply )-:Gordon
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