Land Navigation Part IV: Plotting MGRS

Part IV of the Land Navigation series is here.

Today, we will go over plotting. The steps shown are what we learned while in the Marine Corps and are still used to this day. It’s a quick down-and-dirty guide but should give you the necessary information to successfully plot your own points on a map and reach those points while in the field.

Make sure to check out our other Land Navigation guides if you haven’t already as there is a ton of information in them for you to become a pro at land nav.

We hope that this guide gets some of you thinking about land navigation as it is a great skill to have. At some point, you won’t be able to rely on your GPS watch or phone, and that’s when skills like this become invaluable.

Getting to my objective

• Walking to my first point
  • I’ve plotted where I am, where I’m going, and how far it is.
  • Pace counter now comes into play. Utilizing this I’ll know exactly how far I’ve travelled, how far I need to go, and roughly how long it should take.
• First checkpoint/Point B
  • I can hopefully now see my next checkpoint/stop, and even if not I should definitely know what direction it is in.
  • I can reconfirm I am headed the right way now by checking my magnetic azimuth with my compass in the direction of my next checkpoint and confirming that the azimuth I have written down is the same.
• I made it to my objective/point and I can now focus on the next task at hand.

Conclusion

Thanks for making it to the end of this guide! If you got some value from this please make sure to share and save it for later. We make these to help give people a baseline when it comes to operating/working in a field environment. 

Don’t forget to check out the rest of our guides!