"He shewed them a map of the sea,
Without the least vestige of land.
The crew were well pleased with what they could see,
It was a map they could all understand."

The Hunting of the Snark, I believe.

Funnily enough, when I was being taught celestial navigation, we used a completely blank chart and put our own Lat/Long numbers on.

On one of my later long range Nav tests out of Cape town the brief was: Climb to cross the mountain ranges at FL90, maintain the altitude across the desert to the target area (crossroads of two dirt strips), descend as low as necessary to show that you have arrived by recording what, if anything is around the crossroads.

Paper charts, Compass, Jeppesen Calculator, and the eyeball, and I fly around the crossroads at low level. Miles and miles of sand and an occasional rock, and just one very small shed-like structure, almost right on the crossroads. Made a note and RTB. Asked if I "found the place", "what did you see?", says I, "a very small shack". He says "good, travelling the roads across the desert, farmers and prospectors need a toilet. It's in the shed". I could not take you there today.

IG

I think in those featureless terrain scenarios the SOP is to deliberately track left or right if the target, so that when you hit the line feature you can turn appropriately and be sure to find it. If you try and aim for the target, chances are you’ll miss and hit the line feature but not be sure which side!

Very true, I found that I could intercept the dirt road some 15 miles west of the target and then follow the road until reaching the feature. But even then, up there, one dirt road looks just like another, it just might be 10 miles short or past the dirt road you are looking for, and also tracking East to West. It was more difficult due to the completely feature region you were in.

Very similar conditions in the Libyan desert when flying to the Wadi's in the sixties.

IG

Place the map/chart/sketch/photo mosaic upon your knee orientated in your direction of travel. Develop the100kt. moving index finger.terrain matches. the map…what is ahead, left, right or behind agrees.






map on knee oriented to your direction. of. travel….develop the. 100Kt moving index finger.

But what if you’re doing 420 kts?

I doubt that there are many around now who could manage a Fix Monitored in Azimuth (FMA). It’s described in the last four paragraphs.

YS

Must be something to do with planning airfields! IIRC, the G30 line went straight down the runway at Odiham

Update you moving finger app.

Most of the bushplanes and helicopters I flew cruised in +-100-120 kt. range.

My PPL instructor told me to do this. I was astounded ...

From many flights backseat in Hawk T1's :)

Map marked in time segments along track - 7nm per minute at 420kt (sometimes a segment was just seconds rather than minutes).
I was always impressed with the pilots low level navigation skills with map and stopwatch - too low for any help from Tacan :) but very enjoyable to be riding along at 250' AGL or so.

Thank you Yellow Sun at post #48. That is a fascinating read on the V bomber Nav.

Several times in the 1960s I visited Lindholme as an ATC cadet and flew air experience on the Handley Page Hastings of RBS which had a nearly complete V Bomber kit installed in it, as several of you will remember. A 15 year old snot nosed kid from Doncaster was not considered an OPSEC concern so we were shown the full system whilst we radar bombed targets around Britain such as, I remember, "The North East Corner of the University Library of Aberystwyth." I was amazed at the target accuracy.

Meanwhile the Captain had a fist full of UK topographics in case the trainees down the back got him lost, which they never did.

In the spirit of the thread, in retirement flying my little Cessna with full Garmin, I still carry charts for the country.

And every house move involves buying at least 3 of OS 1/ 50,000 plus a couple of 1/ 25000 for local walks.

I used to fly with an ex RN pilot. I always use the RAF technique of map reading “Track up”, so that what you’re looking at up ahead looks like the map and left is left, right is right. He couldn’t cope with that and had to use “North up”.

I used to change the settings of the moving map to reflect my preference. He didn’t know how to change it back and got quite confused until I showed him how swap it back to North up.

Just a matter of what you’re more used to, I suppose.

I find that extraordinary- how can you map read without orienting the map in the direction of travel?

Some of us are ambidextrous and can do it either way up. :p

Depends partly on the map: sometimes it might be useful to know the names of villages.

My wife and I share driving 2 hours on, two off. She navs "direction of travel up", I use north up. Main satnav use is well zoomed in for minor roads and features on track, thus confirming info on 1/50000. For real car-based hard work/ fun I use a 1/25000 and she drives rather rapidly. Snag is I don't get to see much countryside.

Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy!

Just don’t mention a far eastern race!