Monday, March 25: The Navigatorial Competition and a Comparison of

Introduction:
 

This week's activity is best described as the culmination of the previous month's work. Each team of three will be provided with both the land nav maps and the GPS units, and will be tasked with finding all fifteen points in the course. To add a level of urgency to the exercise, all six of our groups will be in competition for the fastest navigation in the class. The fastest (or most complete) group in three hours will be declared winner; what exactly they win is as yet uncertain but it must surely be something pleasant. Most likely, the answer is simply 'not getting shot,' because as a final measure to complicate our traversal of the Priory is the inclusion of paintball guns. The ultimate goal of this task is to see how well our navigation skills will hold under duress, hopefully we shall pass.

 

Study Area:

For March, the terrain around the Priory has not altered much since our first excursion on the 11th. This is at once both a good and a bad thing: in particular the persistent snow cover continues to impede our ability to make use of the aerial imagery and digital elevation models in our land navs. In addition, when multiplied over the size of the entire course, the snow which at places remained waist high was a tremendous burden to movement. With this in mind, Professor Hupy decided to offer snowshoes (fig 1) to the class for this exercise.

 

I did not wear the snowshoes, but from a distance they looked a good deal like these.

In my estimation, choosing snowshoes would improve my ability to trek over a distance but could be an extra burden in a fight, restricting my maneuverability in the sometimes thick niches of the Wisconsin Woods which can make for wonderful mock-ambushes. I chose to forgo the snowshoes on today’s journey.

A few changes have been made to the course for this week’s activity from our last encounter with the Priory.  As mentioned earlier, this week we are expected to (or striving to) visit each checkpoint on the map.  Furthermore, because of the similarity that paintball markers bear to real weapons and the proximity of the Priory and Interstate 94 to our activity, Joe has designated several areas as off-limits to the navigation.  There will be no shortcuts or firefights across the Nature Academy’s Lawn. These areas have been designated on both our aerial and topographic maps (fig. 2 and 3 below).

fig. 2: the final aerial

 

fig. 3: the final topo

 

Methodology:

            The final maps created for this activity are above, including both the off-limits zones and each of the points that should be navigated to during the afternoon.  The groups are allowed to make use of all, or none, of the previously learned tools in our belts: the compass, GPS, and of course maps are all available and acceptable.

fig. 4: the Garmin Etrex H

The data collection this week will be done with Garmin Etrex Handheld GPS’s again (fig 4), taking a continuous tracklog at 30s intervals.  We will also have to input each waypoint from the course into the GPS as a waypoint.  The Etrex are set to record position in UTM coordinates (zone 15N), and will be used for navigation as well as data collection as participants are given the coordinates for each point at the outset of the exercise.  As a final quality assurance / quality control measure (safeguard against tomfoolery), each team will again receive a punch card which has unique punches to be received at each individual navigation point.  

            After the event is finished, each group will again export their tracklog and waypoint data from their individual GPS into the GIS using the DNR_GPS program.  After downloading the GPS information using this program (fig 5), the data will then be compiled by the professor to make available to the class through the GIS on UW-Eau Claire’s network.  The final stage of this project will be to look at the data in ArcMap and analyze what each team did, and see how well it worked.

    

fig 5: DNR GPS, pre-loading. The path to download is GPS>>Connect to GPS then Track (or Waypoint) >> Download.
Connect GPS to computer before attempting.

Discussion:

          The final data is not altogether surprising.  The final map is figure six below, and by looking closely at it one can see that groups branched off most in the beginning (start was just north of the Priory) and in the middle of the map especially closest the interstate where compressed againt a hill  the groups clustered along a single path almost exclusively.  Some points of conflict can be seen clearly, in a few areas it appears as though a conflict may hav forced a group or so to shift course.  An example of this can be found halfway between points 1A and 2; or directly north of point 5B just south of the restricted zone.

fig 6: the final Aerial Map with Each Group's Tracklog.

          Each point was visited, but no group visited each point.  Suprising to me was that point 4 got hit by each group, while it was extremely remote and difficult to find. On the other hand, point 5A was easy to reach because of the flat terrain and nice forest cover that kept the snow lower, but it hardly recieved any visitors by comparison to many other points. 


Conclusion:

With regards to the terrain itself, it would be a lie to say that I did not wish that I had taken the snowshoes by the end of the trek. While I stand by my previous assertion that snowshoes can be an impediment during a fight, I do not think that the slight loss of ability on a small number of occurrences warrants the massive amount of energy exerted unnecessarily fighting the elements.  Watching my colleagues glide across the snow after a fight, I determined that the snowshoe/no snowshoe issue is best summed up in fig. below.  I would conclude that snowshoes were beneficial to those that wore them.

Snowshoes

Noshoes

            Personally I found that I prefer to trust the land maps to the GPS units.  There are advantages and disadvantages to each, but in this situation I found that using the maps to navigate with provided data that was simply not available through the Etrex.  That aside, my group spent much of its time working forward with our noses half buried in the diminutive screen of the handheld GPS in an effort to stay on course.

There is something to be said for knowing one’s exact location in relation to a goal, and if lost (as we would have been on several occasions after a particular battle or two) the GPS gives the immediate position of the beholder.  On the other hand, valuable time could have been wasted trying to conclude our position on a map.  Of course, maps never run out of batteries which is a situation that my GPS appeared to be nearing a mere three hours into the activity.  Ultimately, the ideal navigation scenario for me would include both a GPS and a map.