Week 8: Final GPS Navigation

Introduction:

Week 8’s GPS navigation activity was yet another extension of the previous navigation activities we have been doing at the UWEC Priory and to keep things interesting we added a little ‘spice’. Groups were geared with their maps, a list of coordinates, a Garmin eTrex GPS and a paintball gun. The goal for this week’s activity was to navigate to all 18 points as fast as possible with the first group having their travel cards fully marked wins.

Study Area:

As mentioned above we have been coming to the UWEC Priory for the previous two activities so as a group we are fairly familiar with its features, which helped to speed up the navigation activities. The UWEC Priory is located south of Eau Claire, WI (see Figure 8-1) and is useful to our university as a nature and children’s center. For the activity we had to navigate to 18 points, 12 of which we already navigated to in the previous two weeks, so with only six new points to find we figured it wouldn’t take all night to do.

Methods:

In preparation for the activity each member had to obtain a Garmin GPS unit from the University prior to going to the Priory. When we arrived our class met outside and each person was given a paintball gun (Figure 8-2) and protective gear before we started. Before we began our professor outlined the rules we had to abide by for the use of the paintball guns. They were; no shooting near the building so we don’t frighten the children at daycare, one must wear their mask at all times, no harming nature or wildlife on purpose, no shooting until the 5 minute grace period at the beginning was over and if we are hit in a firefight we must take a 5 minute ‘time out’.

With previous working knowledge of the GPS units we were given our maps and coordinate pairs and were ready to go. The points were given to us in UTM coordinate pairs (same as previous weeks) and each group of 3 people was able to choose their starting point, which was likely to be different from other groups to avoid constant fear of being ‘painted’. We had to use the readings on our GPS units to direct us to the starting location and once there we started up our track logs.

Our group decided to begin with point 1A and go from there to 6B, 5, 2B and so on and so forth. (see Figure 8-3) We decided on this for no particular reason other than the fact that most groups seemed to be going the same way, i.e. starting at 2A and going clockwise through the course, and some people in our group were less inclined to engage in firefights than I was, which probably would have happened had we gone in the same direction other groups did.

Once the activity for the day was done we had to upload our group’s points to a computer from the eTrex unit. Since we did the same thing a week before the uploading went fast and we placed our point shapefiles in the class geodatabase. The new shapefile was easily imported onto our previously made mapping session and there on the computer we could analyze our new course. We were instructed to make multiple final maps; one with only our own track log, mine has less than half the course since it ran out of battery, one with each group member’s track log, and one with every track log from every class member. (see Figures 8-3, 8-4 & 8-5)

Discussion:

With previous visits to the Priory it was relatively easy for us to navigate, while using a map and a GPS we were finding points with little to no issue. However towards the end of the activity we were becoming restless as we had been hit with a few paintballs and been trudging through the snow for nearly two hours. As you can see towards the end of the navigation we didn’t quite make it to points two and three. Two of our GPS’s had run out of battery and as a result we had to focus on using only one unit as a group. Soon thereafter our map was lost in a firefight and so we needed to combine efforts with another group, luckily we still needed the same points.

During the activity we had navigated to the first three points when we ran into our first ‘enemy’ group. We had them slightly surprised as we snuck up from behind and began firing. Paintballs are not the most accurate form of ammunition; they typically veer to one side after traveling about 20 feet through the air which takes a person’s aim nearly out of the equation. However, our group was able to make the first hit on one of our fellow classmates. After meeting up to see if our colleague was going to have a new bruise we decided to navigate together for a few minutes. We realized that our only chance for action was each other as the other groups were on the other side of the Priory. Our group elected to give them a head start on navigating to the next point and see if we would meet again, we did. The second firefight was between points 6A and 4B, and it was another battle of bad misses but we came out victorious once again. It was done with a wonderful flanking maneuver performed by yours truly. As described Figure 8-4, I swiftly moved around the target while one person distracted them with paintballs and my shot was dead on, though it was mostly luck, right to the face. After that firefight we only saw one other group for the rest of the time that we were navigating, which was a little disappointing. 

Conclusion:

All in all the paintballing just have a little ‘spice’ to the activity and had no real importance to our understanding of navigation and geographical skills. But it certainly made for an exciting way to top off the activity.

This navigation activity was the culmination of all that we had learned while we were out at the UWEC Priory. We first started with just a map and compass, then we changed methods using a GPS navigation unit, and in the end we compiled all the skills we learned with those previous two activities to navigate to all of the points in just one afternoon.

With these obtained skills in navigation with a map or GPS I am now confident in my ability to get somewhere that I need to go if one or the other fails.