Orienteering Course - McHenry Township Park
 | Introduction Basic information |
| Route Sheets Print out the sheets |
| Measure Your Pace Learn How to estimate distances |
| Walk the Course Do you have your compass? |
| Check Your Results How did you do? |
| Advanced Topics Ready for GPS and UTMs? |
Introduction (top)
Four
different orienteering courses are available at McHenry Township Park to practice your
orienteering skills. The longest of
these, the “Course 4: Difficult- Flag Loop” at just over 1 mile long, can be used for
the First Class requirement #2, Orienteering. You will
need the following items:
.
| Base Plate Compass |
| Route Sheets |
| Distance Calculator or Distance Table |
| Pencil |
Route Sheets (top)
Print out the route sheet for the course you want to follow, or all four if you want to try them all. Each of the four courses has it's own route sheet.
| Course 1: Simple - Flag Loop |
| Course 2: |
| Course 3: Medium - Flag Pole
Loop |
| Course 4: Difficult - Flag Loop |
| All four Courses |
Measure Your Pace (top)
Before starting out on an orienteering course you should know the length of your pace. The best way to do that is to count the number of paces you take in 100 feet. As indicated at right, a distance of 100 feet has been marked off on the sidewalk in front of the Township office. There are two red stripes painted on the edge of the sidewalk indicating a distance of 100 feet.
Using the
distance calculator from the U.S. Scouting Service
Project web site, or the
distance table
( Adobe PDF file) will tell you how many paces to take for the distance
between way points.
|
|
 |
Distance Calculator |
Distance Table |
Walk the Course (top)
Each route starts at either the Township Office or Senior Center Flag Poles as indicated on each route sheet. Follow the leg length and course compass heading for each waypoint and write down a short description of the waypoint your reach in the Location Description column on the far right side of the sheet.
Skirting Obstacles
Course 4, the longest and only course that meets First Class requirements, has a major obstacle on one of its legs... a building! Don't worry. There's a trick you can use to bypass it while still staying on course, do the following:
- Turn 90 degrees right or left from your bearing. You don’t have to calculate a new bearing—just sight along the front or back edge of your compass’s base plate, perpendicular to the direction-of-travel arrow.
- Count paces until you're past the obstacle. A pace is a double-step—count every left or right footstep. (The original Roman “mile” was 1,000—or mille—double-steps.)
- Turn and walk your original bearing until you've passed the obstacle. Now turn 90 degrees again—leftward if you turned right at the start and vice versa. Count the same number of paces; then resume your original course.
Pace counting is rarely effective beyond about 200 paces—roughly a quarter-mile. To improve accuracy, note the time you travel on the outward leg, and try to match both time and pace count on the return leg.
Check Your Results (top)
Compare
your waypoint descriptions you
wrote down with the ROUTE ANSWER
SHEET
Advanced Topics (top)
USGS Topographical Maps
One of the most common form of topographical maps, often referred to as "topo" maps, are the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The scale used for most U.S. topographic mapping is 1:24,000. USGS maps at this scale cover an area measuring 7.5 minutes of latitude and 7.5 minutes of longitude and are commonly called 7.5-minute quadrangle maps. The USGS webpage on Maps, Imagery, and Publications has links to where you can purchase printed maps, downloadable maps and files, and helpful topics such as information on map symbols and scales. The three links below are to the downloadable topo maps for the McHenry area. They are large files and may take some time to open.
|
McHenry Includes McHenry, the southern part of Wonder Lake, Veterans Acres & Sternes Woods Park |
| Richmond Includes the the city of Richmond, the northern part of Wonder Lake, Township Park, Harrison-Benwell & Glacial Park |
|
Wauconda Includes Wauconda, Chapel Hills Country Club, Moraine Hills State Park, McHenry Dam & Pistakee Bog Nature Preserve |
NOTE: The USGS site has in incredible amount of resources on biology, geography, geology, geospatial and water. These are the main science areas where they focus their research. If you are into nature and science, you should spend some time browsing their site. You will be amazed at what you can find and learn.
GeoPDF
The downloadable PDF files from the USGS employ a new
technology called GeoPDF. The new features provided by this technology let you do things like measure distances between objects in the map, add your
own comments to specific places on the map, view the files in conjunction with
Google Maps, or even integrate them with your GPS to track your position on the
map. You need to download a new Acrobat PDF toolbar from
TerraGo in order to access these features. The toolbar is free of charge.
More information on GeoPDF can be found in an
article in the U.S. Army's Engineer magazine
GPS & UTMs
The Universal Transverse Meridian (UTM) coordinates are provided on the ROUTE SHEETS also if you want to try your hand at using a GPS unit.
Note: More information on these topics coming soon
26 June, 2006
Troop 149 of McHenry IL would like to thank the McHenry Township for all of
its support to scouting.
