how to use a compass to find property lines

Sometimes, they run out of battery; sometimes, after years of use, they fail. Compass broken? Navigation tips from an Appalachian Trail pro. Our recommendation: keep the phone in your pack and go old-school instead. Your direction of travel arrow should now be pointing towards your destination.

(They’re hundreds of miles apart. 2.

2. Buy Now. Now follow these rules to get found.

It’s relatively easy to find all of the corners of your property using ExpertGPS. Sign up for our Backcountry Navigation or Basic Map and Compass online course.

I found my missing pin in dense woods near dusk in 5 min.

There’s nothing special about it, but there doesn’t need to be. Place the corner of your compass’s baseplate on your location, then rotate your entire compass until the straightedge forms a line between your location and your destination. Take a bearing on your first landmark: Line up your direction of travel arrow with your landmark, then rotate the bezel until the needle lines up with the markings for north.

Your smartphone can do everything else, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it has a compass built into it. So, knowing that we need to go 216 degrees from our bearing, we can set our compass. Tom Arneson, Minnesota licensed Land Surveyor N0 12682. From navigation to staying dry to predicting the weather, our primer will have you dialed. You’ll need a plat, mortgage map, or legal land survey of your property, showing the distance and bearing from each corner to the next. To create a legal land survey that you can use for selling property or establishing boundaries, you should consult a licensed land surveyor. With the introduction of modern GPS units that combine signals from Glonass, Galileo, and US GNSS satellites, the accuracy has gotten much better, and the techniques described above should get you close enough to the spot to find a hidden survey pin. Use the Go To command on your GPS to navigate to each waypoint marking the corner of your land. (Mountains and lakes are both good choices.)

Check off the Move to Waypoint and Add to Route boxes. Keeping these two simple items in your pack—and knowing how to use them—is a small step that could save you a lot of trouble.

Check online. Continue Reading: Click Here for the next page! Thanks, Tom!

Here are some common components. And then around the ring of my compass are all the different degrees, my bearings. If you have a lensatic compass, your steps may vary slightly. – Fax Orders: (815) 346-5239. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Simple, yet reliable, this compass is great for spot checks and map consults. It’s easy to see why: In clear skies, modern GPS receivers can determine a user’s location accurately and quickly with little to no user skill necessary. Uh-oh, you forgot to download free maps at Backpacker.com, and now you're lost in the woods without any navigational tools. It’s relatively easy to find all of the corners of your property using ExpertGPS. In ExpertGPS, right-click on the starting waypoint, and click Project Waypoint. Finding your campsite, a spectacular viewpoint or your way back out of the wilderness won’t always be simple tasks. Your compass is going to have an arrow pointing right down the middle of the compass.

I've been looking for this pin for 2 years. Using your compass, orient your map so that north is pointing to true north.

Read on. (Pro tip: make sure the fixed grid lines on your compass line up with the north-south grid lines on your map.) If you don’t adjust your compass to compensate, you’ll find yourself headed in the wrong direction.

When protected with either waterproof coatings or careful storage, maps rarely fail. Find Property Lines Homepage "You are awesome! Just to be safe, keep that compass handy. ExpertGPS allows you to enter bearings in True or Magnetic degrees, or aligned to a UTM, state plane, or national coordinate grid. It also gradually changes over time as the Earth’s tectonic plates shift. Ours happens to be next to a very large pine tree so it’s fairly easy to locate. 4. How to Find Property Lines: Compass Survey, Temporary Fencing or Pen for Goats or other Animals. Early American land records were characterized by descriptions that often sounded like this 1812 excerpt from Connecticut: The Suunto M-3 NH is a solid baseplate compass for beginners and experienced orienteers alike. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for your other landmarks. Compasses first appeared in China around 200 B.C. Finding a Property Line using a Compass. While there are many different kinds of compasses on the market, the most common for backpackers is the baseplate compass, which consists of a liquid-filled compass face attached to a flat, clear piece of plastic. It is pretty typical if you’re looking for a pin on your property to find that it is just a piece of rebar that’s been hammered into the ground with a bit of surveyors tape thrown around it. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. A compass is the most reliable navigation method—but it’s no good unless you know your way around it. As always, remember to adjust for declination, 1.

Furthermore, they can usually only tell which way you’re facing once you’re on the move. Buy Now. This technique should get you within a few feet of a property corner and will help you narrow down where to search to find missing survey monuments. I'm happy to walk you through how ExpertGPS can handle all of your mapping and data conversion needs. I know it’s not 100% accurate, but we know that we’re going to get close enough doing it this way. Using your GPS or the mapping tools in ExpertGPS, mark a waypoint at the starting corner that you’ve located on your property. Now when I move my compass so that the north stays pointing at north, if I walk the direction of my arrow, I know I’ll be walking 216 degrees. Next, you need an application to read the coordinates of your cursor position. Sure, not all who wander are lost. Thank you so much."

Take a bearing on your first landmark: Line up your direction of travel arrow with your landmark, then rotate the bezel until the needle lines up with the markings for north. Magnetized needle: located inside of the bezel, it always points to magnetic north, not true north. Remember, the whole point of this isn’t that we know exactly where the fence line is going to be or precisely where the property line is, but to make sure that when we start cutting down trees, we’re only cutting down our trees and not the neighbors. Declination wasn’t discovered until roughly 720 A.D. Lensatic compasses are precise, but have a learning curve. If you have trouble remembering that rule, try this mnemonic: Maps Tell Almost Everything. Tim in Pennsylvania, 12 acres. And even in the age of GPS and smartphones, the most reliable way to make sure that you stay on track is by using a map and compass. These tips, from backpacker and astronomy Ph.D. candidate Melodie Kao, will ensure that you never get lost in the dark again.*. Holding the compass level in front of you, turn your body until the north arrow on the bezel matches up with the compass’s needle. Learn how to use this indispensable tool and stay on track. Michael T. asks: 1. And I’m going to line that arrow so that 216 degrees, the bearing that we came up with looking at the map, is pointed down that arrow. It shows you the property line leading to the next boundary corner, based on the distance and bearing you entered. That’s why a magnetized compass and a paper map—and the navigational knowhow to use them—are part of the Ten Essentials.. If you already know your location, you can use your compass to figure out how to get to any point on your map. Using a pencil, draw a line across the edge. Metal interferes with compasses’ magnetic needles, so avoid spreading your map out on a car hood. Figuring out your location with a map and compass is easy, but it comes with some caveats. Your email address will not be published. Also popular are lensatic compasses, which flip open like a locket and use a sighting wire in the cover and a rear lens to take highly accurate bearings. Baseplate: a clear back that lets you see the map underneath. While they have the advantage of being precise and durable, lensatic compasses have a slightly higher learning curve. Read the number next to the index line—this is your bearing. Using your compass, orient your map so that north is pointing to true north.

There are many versions of “North”, geodetic, grid, astronomic, besides magnetic. Compasses, on the other hand, are nigh-indestructible. The easiest way to find the angle of declination is to check your map: most have declination diagrams, along with the date it was last revised.

If you still have questions after reading this or the other ExpertGPS tutorials or have a file or a project you need assistance with, please get in touch using the form below, or send the file you're working with to support at expertgps dot com. ExpertGPS now handles assumed basis of bearings and custom declinations, which should make it much easier to enter older plats. Using any information you have available—such as plat maps, old survey deeds, etc.—you may be able to lay your own property lines using basic surveying techniques.

(Don't know how to do that? So let’s take this to the woods, find our pin, and see if 216 degrees on our compass gets us to the other pin.

They don’t take batteries, don’t have screens to break, and don’t need software updates.

Smart! If you can find a third, even better. There should be an angle and a direction—for example, 8 degrees east. ), One of the tricky parts of navigating with a compass is that magnetic north isn’t the same as true north. Line that up on the straight edge. and were likely used for fortune-telling.

Working off an older map? GPS dead?

There are several different services that can use the location you’ll be hiking in to calculate your declination. © 1998-2020 TopoGrafix – 24 Kirkland Dr, Stow, MA – Email: support@expertgps.com On the map, place one corner of your compass’s straightedge on the landmark, the rotate the entire compass until the needle lines up with north on the bezel. The angle between the two—known as the declination—varies depending on your location. The biggest? After adjusting your compass for declination, start by orienting your map to true north, as in the previous example.

I've had good success using a metal detector to find buried iron rods and pins, after using ExpertGPS and a handheld GPS to get to the search location. 4. Required fields are marked *. Find the boundary points of your vacant lot in Google maps. J&J Acres, LLC is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. (The number next to the index line is your bearing).

Starting from any known corner, measure out the distances and angles listed on the survey deed or plat map. You’ll need a plat, mortgage map, or legal land survey of your property, showing the distance and bearing from each corner to the next. This article covers the following concepts: Find your way the old-school way by mastering the map. This will bring up the Project Waypoint dialog, where you’ll enter the distance and bearing of each call in your survey map. © 2020 Pocket Outdoor Media Inc. All Rights Reserved, most reliable way to make sure that you stay on track, Keeping these two simple items in your pack. I see 50 feet at times, rare, but it happens. Bearings are most often assumed, based on one line of a section, being a cardinal direction. Even experienced backpackers sometimes neglect their navigation skills, but when the trail peters out or is covered by snow, knowing how to blaze your own path is absolutely essential. Just like the GPS on your phone, all of these apps require a charged battery to work, which defeats the purpose of a low-tech solution like a compass. They are almost never “true”.

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