Basic Leaders Course (BLC formerly WLC PLDC)
Basic Leaders Course (BLC formerly WLC PLDC)
Posted on Mar 16, 2018
How was your experience at Fort Leonard Wood BLC? Any advice for land nav?
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Anyone ever went to Fort Leonard wood for BLC ? How was your experience ? Any advice for land Nav ?
Basic Leaders Course (BLC formerly WLC PLDC)
Fort Leonard Wood
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NCO Academy
Posted 6 y ago
Responses: 7
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Never done land nav at Leonard Wood but I've done plenty of land nav. Rule #1. Take your time plotting your points and your azimuths. Go slow and do it right. If you screw up here, none of the other rules will matter. Rule #2. Trust your compass and follow it all the way to your point. No matter what your brain is telling you, the compass is right. Keep it in front of your face the whole time if you need to. You're not patrolling so there's nothing else you need to be looking at. Rule #3. ALWAYS ORIENT YOUR MAP. This screws up a lot of people with land nav. If you are heading south, when you pull out your map the southern part of the map should be facing the direction you're are travelling. This means, (in the case of travelling south) the map will be upside down. That's ok. As you follow your azimuth and you see a hill to your left, then you should be able to look at the map and the hill will be on the left there as well. Rule #4. Use your compass and azimuth over terrain association. Trying to use hills and whatnot to find your point is very difficult. Seeing a hill on a contour map and finding it on the ground is not as easy as it seems. Unless it is the only hill and stands out well. Use your compass. Follow your azimuth.
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COL (Join to see)
Yea. Take your time to make sure you plot your start point correctly. - sorry about the ranger school story- Ranger school, night landnav. I plot my start location one click off. Then I plot all my other points from there. I take off running cause I’m like a master landnav guy, from all that time as a Inf scout. Can’t find my first point, I can’t do terrain Association because it’s dark. I get frustrated when I get to the point I think it should be but I didn’t get there like I should so I stare at my map with my red lense flashlight. I finally figure out my rookie mistake and I have less than an hour to find my next three points. I run as fast as I can to get them and take off even fast on the road back to the finish line. Three minutes to spare. Rule#1: Take your time and plot your points correctly.
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SGT (Join to see)
CPT Gabe Snell - As you said know your pace count, SPC Jouloute start counting every chance you get. It's been over 30 years since I did it for real and last year I was able to give a concrete contractor, over the phone, to within 10sq', how much crete he'd need for the irregular pour of over 2500 squares. He offered me a job. All because I know without thinking about it how far I step.
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CPT Lawrence Cable
I'm not sure I agree that you should use the compass and pace count over terrain association. Yes, I agree that there are some places where there is not enough elevation change to show on some scales of military maps, but there are a lot of places that dead reckoning isn't really possible or blows chunks to do it. As many of us know, river bottoms in the Southeast are generally nightmares to traverse, so if there is enough terrain features to offset my point and follow a ridgeline, I pick it every time.
A short story as an example, I accompanied one of my rifle squads on the lovely Island of Adak. The squad leader was diligently following his compass and doing his pace count. After about two miles, I stopped the patrol and asked the squad leader a couple of map reading questions, what was the contour interval of this map being the big one. He correctly identified it. So I asked how big it was, and he correctly answered 20 meters (big intervals). Then asked him to count the contour intervals on feature that ran beside the route until the next azimuth and he came up with close answer of somewhere around 700'. At that point he finally realized that all he had to do was keep that feature to the proper side and he wasn't going to get lose.
A short story as an example, I accompanied one of my rifle squads on the lovely Island of Adak. The squad leader was diligently following his compass and doing his pace count. After about two miles, I stopped the patrol and asked the squad leader a couple of map reading questions, what was the contour interval of this map being the big one. He correctly identified it. So I asked how big it was, and he correctly answered 20 meters (big intervals). Then asked him to count the contour intervals on feature that ran beside the route until the next azimuth and he came up with close answer of somewhere around 700'. At that point he finally realized that all he had to do was keep that feature to the proper side and he wasn't going to get lose.
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MAJ (Join to see)
CPT Lawrence Cable I use terrain association a lot as well, but it took a lot of practice before I could do it well. That's why I suggest that people who are still learning stick to dead reckoning. Plus, most land nav courses have points that are only a few hundred meters apart. I don't disagree with you at all though. I think a combination of both methods is critical when it comes to patrolling.
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Don't forget to convert your grid azimuth to a magnetic azimuth. TC 3-25.26 is where you want to look if you're questioning your land nav abilities.
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