By Gregory Mitchell

Below is a summary of most of the non-electronic methods of navigation, which exceeds that of the O Level syllabus for navigation and then some. It is short enough both in the description of the equipment needed and how you use it, that it could be learnt by a bright student and memorized on a wet Sunday afternoon.

An advanced Mind Development student was trained on what I called the Explorer's Kit, which contained both navigational equipment and the methods needed to monitor natural resources. The navigational equipment ensured that a student did not get lost on the way and could find the destination; most of this paper describes the equipment used. Natural resources, such as water and fruit trees, found both on the way and at the destination, may not always be as they appear. Toxic water supplies can be a particular problem, particularly when the destination is an an oasis. The water is often contaminated by the dead and rotting bodies of animals that have drowned in the source of water, and toxic waste from mines, which may be distant but carried by underground rivers, which bring water to the oasis (this is often the case in the Polish Desert). In this, case the water would be injurious to a student's health and may even be lethal.

The navigational methods were taught on our Mind Development courses, because there have been a number of devices put on the market that in my opinion reduce a person's intelligence. An example then would be a pocket calculator, which would give the answer to a problem in arithmetic or algebra, but it not give the user any inkling of how the answer was obtained. Thus he probably would not be able to do it in his head. In the Army a form of GPS was introduced, in the early 1990s, the consequence of which was that the soldiers in the lower ranks soon lost the abilities to read a map or use traditional navigational tools. The officers fortunately did not lose these skills, as they may be needed in time of war. Likewise, they understood the calculations and logic behind a GPS, which they could replicate, giving a reliable answer as to their location.

Determination of longitude is difficult to obtain, so research continues even to this day, whereas the calculation of latitude is much easier and more accurate, even when one is using devices from yesteryear.

Generally, longitude can be calculated in five different ways: Solar; Lunar; Jovian; by using the Magnetic Pole and the angle that it subtends, over the range zero to 360 degrees longitude; and a contour map in conjunction with an altimeter. There exists a further method that currently I am working on myself; for the moment, this must remain secret, as there is a possibility of making money on the idea - something to bolster my pension, which is rather small.

1. The usual device for determining longitude by Solar methods is a sextant. A sextant is very accurate, as it can measure to within 400 meters of latitude at the Equator and circa half that were you in the temperate zones, as it can resolve 15 seconds of an angle. In contrast, the methods used to measure latitude have an accuracy in the North South direction of about 100 yards - the length of a Soccer football field.

   Beyond its lack of accuracy, which is about a quarter of the level of accuracy as obtains when measuring latitude, the sextant also has other defects, in particular the time of day: a sextant can only be used at noon. This frequency of navigation may be of value to a ship at sea, such as crossing the Atlantic; a sextant's only other use, when it is used in the day time, is to calibrate other instruments, but it is not of much use in the night time, due to the fact that in tropical regions the long trek takes place in the night, because one is exhausted when the temperature can be over 50 degrees Centigrade, and furthermore the Sun shines directly from above. The use of the sextant at night and other methods are discussed in the section below.

2. A sextant can be used in the night, but is much less accurate than when it is used in the day. To use this method a Lunar Calendar is required, as the Moon does not rotate around the Earth in 24 hours. For about ten days of the month on average when the Moon is more than half size, and the sky is not overcast, measurements can be made, but the matter of seeing the horizon when it is invisible has not been adequately solved. Currently, the only solution is to use some form of spirit level, a method that is not very accurate; a method that requires a lot of experience and inspired guesswork. This method will at best put you within a mile or two if you are lucky, and it is not capable of real time operation, that is, with the frequency needed on land.

   As with the above paragraph, a sextant can be used several times during the night, especially when you are in the dark, so the eyes are dark adapted, then it is possible to find several bright stars that will be at midheaven at different times of the night This method is not very accurate, the calculations difficult, and you will require a set of astrological tables, so you can look up of when a particular star is midheaven. In my opinion, this is the only remaining use of Astrologers: Good Ones.

   There is another Lunar method that can be used. It has the virtue that this method can be used every few minutes, so it is a method that can almost be used in real time. It is not quite as accurate as a sextant, but this method can be set against the fact that at an average walking speed, you will have only walked about a half a mile, so you should not get into trouble, nor will you get lost.

   As the Moon's orbit around the Earth is elliptical its apparent diameter will change accordingly. This difference in apparent diameter can easily be seen when there is an annular eclipse of the Sun. As a consequence, when a star is occulted by the Moon, it will take longer when the moon is at its perigee (near to the Earth) than it will when the moon is at its apogee. This difference in the time it takes for a bright star (otherwise one may be in error when choosing a faint star) to disappear and reappear is significant and something of the order of plus or minus 5% of the time taken. To use these measurements, however, one needs a lunar calendar.

   Note: A good way to measure the apparent diameter of the Moon is to use a pair of dividers at arm's length, then measure the distance between the points with a ruler.

   This type of reading, although not as accurate as a GPS, can be precise, as you will only have walked a few hundred yards between readings if the measurements are taken with a good stopwatch. Personally I use a Bulover watch of the type used by the astronauts when they went to the Moon. With this type of watch you can time an event with an accuracy of one tenth of a second, and with this class of watch a person with keen eyes and a lot of practice can time things to the nearest twentieth of a second. If it's good enough for spacemen it's good enough for me.

   An adjunct to the above is to use the rising and setting times times of the Sun, the Moon and some of the brighter stars, as this will give a tad or two of greater accuracy, and act as a help in calibrating the other devices in your explorer's kit. To use the method above, you will require a good stopwatch and/or chronometer, a Lunar calendar and the dreaded astrological tables.

3. I have included the Jovian method for historical reasons. This method was mainly used by cartographers, who needed to know where they were so they could draw maps, rather than having to go anywhere, if push came to shove, although this mode of navigation is slow. The Jovian method, before the introduction of the GPS was the most accurate method of what I would call 'static navigation.' If you can see the larger moons of Jupiter, which usually requires a telescope, these moons were the most accurate clock available before the invention of the atomic clock. You would, however, have to wait a long time to know you had the correct reading, as many moons require about a month to make a complete orbit. The Jovian Method was better than anything on the market when it was used, and it was possible to discover your location within a few feet. The Jovian Method has been used well into the twentieth century.

   The largest moons of Jupiter have a magnitude of circa 6.5 and this is just beyond the limit of magnitude 6, which is given as the limit for naked eye astronomy, although a few young people have asserted they are able to see the moons in question. In the case of the static navigators, they would, however, have had to use a telescope.

   A new non-electronic method has come to the rescue of the modern wanabe static navigator: a special pair of glasses, which are in fact a two and half powered pair of binoculars. These are of sufficient power for most people to see the moons of Jupiter, as they would have an apparent magnitude of five - sufficient for the purpose. Complete adaptation to night vision would give an apparent magnitude somewhat below five, even as low as 4.5: indeed, as bright as many of the stars in the sky that a person is easily aware of.

   Note: One of the greatest problems with the methods described is how to preserve night vision in the daytime. The tried and true method, a method used in the Second World War, is to wear red goggles, as red light has little effect on night vision. The red goggles will give you enough vision to see self-illuminating objects, such as stars, but they will not give you what is needed to read a map; a frequent activity when you are a navigator. What is needed is a bright source of red light, as this will cause minimal impairment of night vision.

   My solution has been to purchase a headlamp of the type used by cavers, which has three very bright white LEDs. It is powered by three AAA batteries, so with the minimal current drain the batteries last a long time. I replaced the white LEDs with three red, 10,000 candela LEDs. The batteries were replaced and three AAA Energizer Lithium batteries took their place. There are several advantages too be gained by using this type of battery: they have a slightly higher voltage, 1.8 rather than 1.5, so the LEDs are brighter. At the low current drain required, they have 20% more capacity than a Duracell of the same size. They only have 60% of the weight of a Duracell, a consideration if you have to carry more than a few. And last but not least, as a lithium battery they can be used over a temperature range of minus 70 degrees Centigrade to 120 degrees Centigrade without much degradation of performance.

4. The magnetic poles and their relationship to the actual poles can be used to measure longitude, and it may also give you an approximate latitude when the compass is used as a declinometer, but this is a subject for another paper. Furthermore, an approximate measurement of longitude can be made using only a common compass and the appropriate map. This first simple measurement will only provide a starting point that saves time, but it must be used in conjunction with more accurate devices for local navigation, within a hundred kilometer radius.

   The use of the magnetic poles is made possible for two reasons; the magnetic poles are several hundred miles from the actual poles, and that at a particular longitude the magnetic and the actual poles are aligned such that the magnetic poles and the actual poles are in a direct line with each other, so magnetic North and true North are the same. All good maps indicate the deviation from true North, so your compass, if it is not a toy, can be adjusted accordingly. In short, if you go East with an unadjusted compass the needle will point to the left, but if you go West, the needle will point to the right. Reaching a maximum deviation, the deviation will decrease when you reach 180 degrees East or West. Between a longitude of zero and one of 360 degrees, the compass will always give you an approximation of your longitude. In other words, using the forgoing with a little arithmetic on the side, you can get a good idea where you are when you check the magnetic deviation on an appropriate map. What's more, this method works in real time. That's all there is to it.

   Currently, I am working on a non-electric compass, using watch cogs, so a 18 degree sweep of the main compass becomes an 180 degree sweep on the slave compass, making it ten times as sensitive as the main compass when determining your latitude: this could have several applications.

5. An altimeter and a contour map can be used for local navigation and when used in skilled hands it can give your latitude and longitude within a few feet. A contour map shows the height of hills and the depth of valleys.

   There are a number of steps to this method, but the time it takes is rewarded by its accuracy.

   1. Find a hill on your map that you estimate is only about a mile or two and looks about the same hight as a hill nearby that is indicated on your map.
   2. Place a stick in the ground.
   3. Stand in such a way that the stick lines up with the hill.
   4. Using a pedometer (a device that shows how far you have walked), walk 100 yards to the left at right angles to the angle that puts the stick directly in line with the hill when you look at the summit. Once you have walked the required 100 yards put in another stick.
   5. Walk back to the first stick, then continue for another 100 yards then put in another stick.
   6. The stick which is now the center stick, is used as a reference.
   7. With a sighting compass, when a measurement is taken, it will give you the angle that subtends when you look at the mountain or hill through the sighting compass.
   8. When you have taken this measurement, walk to the right hand stick, then take a measurement of the angle of the hill from this perspective. To measure from both the left hand stick and the right hand stick will cancel out most of the error that may have been made during the measurement from the left hand stick. With a little arithmetic, you should be able to measure the distance of the hill or mountain. This is one of the methods used by surveyors.
   9. Once you have the distance of the hill it easy to measure the height and this is done by measuring the angle from the center stick and the top of the hill. To make this easy, I have constructed a device from a school protractor and a small pendulum. Surveyors have something a little more sophisticated, but with this device used in conjunction with some of the math that you learned at school and promptly forgot, you will measure the hight to an accuracy of better than one percent, which in 99% of cases is sufficient to verify that you have chosen the correct hill, the exception being the case that there are two hills of the same size in close proximity to one another. I doubt this.

   An altimeter will give you a further dimension to local navigation when you have the correct survey map. There are several steps to this procedure, as there were above. These steps are laid out below:

   1. An altimeter can measure any altitude shown on the map, but before this is done the altimeter may need to be calibrated with a barometer.
   2. A barometer measures local air pressure and is frequently used to predict weather in the short term. As local air pressure can vary by as much as plus or minus seven percent, this can make an altimeter several hundred meters in error.
   3. The best method of calibrating the altimeter is to find on your contour map a place that is nearby and not too far away. This can be used as your datum line.
   4. The barometer will show the local air pressure which is always good to know and then the altimeter can be set to the altitude on the contour map. By using the contours on the map in conjunction with an altimeter, it is always possible to know where you are and where you are going, unless it is dark - and even then.

      Note: I have done this without using a barometer, but air pressure can rise or fall in a very short time, so navigation errors can be made. Pocket watch sized barometers can be obtained from eBay for about $100.

With the exception of a sextant, as I do not use one, all my kit fits into a leather pouch, which is six inches by four inches and is two inches thick. With the exception of a magnifying glass with an LED driven by a lithium battery, all the kit is non-electric or non-electronic.

When I went to Iceland in 1964 to see the volcanoes I found that Iceland is like a desert, which has few surface features except the volcanoes, so many budding explorers with neither the experience nor the appropriate navigational tools have been lost to all eternity. This trip was successful, because I had all the correct tools.

With the exception of a sextant, as I do not use one, all my kit fits into a leather pouch, which is six inches by four inches and is two inches thick. With the exception of a magnifying glass with an LED driven by a lithium battery, all the kit is non-electric or non-electronic.