Passing Selection, Land Navigation Without the Use of a Protractor

We covered a variety of subjects during our Land Navigation articles and one of the points we made was to tie down all of your equipment as to not lose track of any of it. This will play into our hands-on video this morning.

I have received some questions on my Twitter account, which I normally use for my NFL football writing. However, if any of our readers have any questions about Selection or the SFQC in the future feel free to shoot me a message on Twitter @SteveB7SFG or email me at [email protected] and I’ll be happy to answer them.

The question I received from Twitter this week was as follows: “you wrote about not losing any of your gear. …you caCan you plot your points and navigate without the use of a protractor?” The answer is yes… you can but it obviously isn’t the preferred method.

In the attached video below, I use my spare US Army Lensatic Compass. Which is teaching point #1. During my days in Panama, another unit jumped into Gatun Drop Zone, probably en route to the Jungle Warfare School at Ft. Sherman.

Part of the Gatun DZ had tall elephant grass that would be burned off. Obviously, someone (probably an officer or senior NCO) jumped in and didn’t have their compass tied down to their LBE. And moving thru the elephant grass it pulled it right off on the edge of the cleared area.

A couple of days later we did a jump there and on my way off the drop zone, I found it, all wet from the previous day’s rain. It has been my backup compass ever since. I say this as we spoke about the draws of Hoffman where the Land Navigation portion of SFAS is conducted in. And the same thing can easily happen to you. Tie it down. Tie everything down.

And the question takes into account a candidate either dropping his protractor on the ground or not securing it inside his map case. More hands-on training pieces including some video will be forthcoming.

Check out the video here:

Photo courtesy of DOD