Course Map
Grid Coordinates and Map Reading — your route into the course, and your route back to any lesson you have already finished.
Course Materials
NAV-01 Student Companion Guide (PDF)
Condensed reference for all eight lessons, the terrain feature chart, the precision table, and three blank worksheets — the Margin Check, the Grid Card, and the Grid Card Verification Log. Print the worksheets; the rest is reference you can carry.
NAV-01 Study Guide (printed)
The same guide, bound and printed. Worth having if you would rather not print worksheets yourself, or if you want a copy that survives a pack in wet weather — the worksheets are meant to be written on in the field.
Your Progress
Checking progress on this device
Progress is stored in the browser you are studying in. If you switch to a different device or clear your browser data, the lessons will lock again and you will need to work back through them.
Lessons 01–08
Lesson 01 is open from the start. Each lesson after it unlocks when the one before it has been completed — that means every knowledge check answered correctly, not just the page opened.
Lesson 01
Why “Near the Big Oak” Fails
What ambiguous location language actually costs, measured in minutes. The four location systems ordinary people already use, what each is genuinely good for, and why a group has to standardize on one before it needs it. Opens with the exercise that Lesson 08 comes back to.
Checking
Lesson 02
Reading the Margin First
The information printed around the edge of a topographic map: sheet name and number, scale, contour interval, the declination diagram, the legend, and the adjoining-sheets index. Why the margin is the first thing you read.
Checking
Lesson 03
Contours and Terrain
Reading shape from lines. The five major terrain features and the three minor ones, how contour spacing tells you slope, and how terrain association catches a grid in the wrong square before anyone acts on it.
Checking
Lesson 04
Anatomy of an MGRS Grid
A full grid reference taken apart piece by piece: the grid zone designator, the 100,000-meter square identifier, and the numeric easting and northing. The four precision levels and what each one actually promises the person receiving it.
Checking
Lesson 05
Read Right, Then Up
Work this one with your map open
The hands-on lesson. Extracting a grid from a map and plotting one onto it with a coordinate scale, and how to interpolate when you do not have one. The three errors behind nearly every misplotted grid, and the habits that prevent each.
Checking
Lesson 06
Grids From Devices
Setting a handheld receiver or a phone to display MGRS, why the map datum has to match the paper you are plotting on, and converting between latitude/longitude and grid without introducing an error. Then confirming the device against the ground before you transmit.
Checking
Lesson 07
Grids in Reports
The location line in a SALUTE report, in a routine situation report, and in a nine-line medical request — three different jobs needing three different precisions. Matching precision to purpose, and confirmation by readback on every grid passed by voice.
Checking
Lesson 08
The Grid Card
Work this one with your map open
Closing the loop back to your own situation. Converting every fixed location in your family plan and your group’s plan into grids, and building a pocket card the whole household can read off correctly. Ends with the drill that proves it works.
Checking
Certificate
NAV-01 Certificate of Completion
Unlocks once all eight lessons are marked complete on this device. You add your name or callsign on the certificate page, and the completion date is set the first time it opens and does not change afterwards.
Checking
How to Use This Page
This page is a shortcut for people already working the course, not a second front door. If you have not started yet, go back to the course overview first — it explains what the course is for and what you need in front of you before Lesson 01 will be worth much.
Coming back to review is expected and encouraged. A completed lesson stays open permanently, and re-reading Lesson 04 or 05 before you next work a map is a better use of ten minutes than most things you could do with them.
Before Lessons 05 and 08
Both of those lessons are written to be worked with a paper topographic map of your own ground open in front of you, along with a coordinate scale or protractor, a pencil, and a straight edge. Reading them without the map will teach you the vocabulary and none of the skill.
Where to Get a Coordinate Scale
A coordinate scale only works on the map scale it was made for. A 1:24,000 tool read against a 1:50,000 sheet gives confident, wrong answers, so check which scale you are buying before you buy it.
MapTools is the specialist supplier most search and rescue teams use, and they list stock tools by map scale. They also publish free printable versions as PDFs and permit copying and sharing on a not-for-profit basis — print onto clear transparency film, check the printed size against your own map before trusting it, and expect toner to wear unless you laminate. If your map is a scale they do not stock, their site shows how to rescale an existing tool by printing it at a percentage. maptools.com — free tools are under Resources. Fortune Favors the Prepared has no affiliation with them and receives nothing from the link.
Semper Paratus, Semper Gumby