Expeditionary navigation in the arabian desert

[HumphreyBear]

I've been reading a number of your posts and sites since I joined ExPo, and I admire the thought, logic and effort which you put into every one. Thank you for taking the time, I hope you know it is appreciated.
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Humphrey.

 

[Ryanmb21]

This is a great thread, thanks!

 

[maxingout]

Thanks for the feedback. I enjoy writing articles because I experience a flashback to past adventures. Lately, my life seems short on adventures, and long on work. Writing stories on my websites takes the sting out just a bit.

I just made up a website a couple of nights ago to help me refocus and get centered on what is most important to me.

http://PositiveThinkingSailor.com

This particular website reminds me of who I am, where I have been, and where I hope to go in the future. It's kind of neat to make up a special website designed for myself. No matter where I am, I can use my phone, my ipad, or other computer to refocus. A little inspiration works wonders for me. Hence, I use Positive Thinking Sailor to stay inspired.

 

[maxingout]

Yes. Puts you more in touch with the Earth you are navigating than following an electronic readout. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experiences! Much appreciated!

David

Navigating by compass, sun bearings, and astronomical sites creates a situational awareness that cannot be duplicated with electronic navigation. A GPS creates a false sense of security. Just because you know your exact position on planet earth does not mean that you know what you are doing. If you are not situationally aware, a GPS can navigate you into a disaster. I am not downplaying a GPS. I am saying that when people go to remote places where self rescue is the only option, situational awareness is my highest priority, and my exact position on planet earth usually doesn't matter that much.

Compass and astronomical navigation immerse me in my environment and create a type of situational awareness that helps me stay out of trouble. If my GPS dies, I can still complete the expedition.

Of course, this is only the way my mind works. Other people are situationally aware using only the GPS.

When I visited David Livingstone's museum in Scotland, they had the sextant on display that he used to navigate and map Africa. When I sailed in the south Pacific, I saw the maps of New Zealand created by Captain Cook using his sextant. The maps are incredibly accurate. When I get out my compass and sextant, I go on a mind trip that connects me with explorers who had awesome adventures using only sextant and compass. And even without sextant and compass, their situational awareness would have kept them alive. The sextant and compass made it easier to construct maps for those who explored after them.

I love my GPS. I just don't let it fool me into believing that it defines the navigational challenges that I face when I am outback and beyond.

I love my compass and sextant because it connects me with planet earth, the stars, and with those who explore it.

 

[maxingout]

Great stuff, thanks for putting the effort in to post it. Can you give some insight in how you planned water supplies for your desert trips? Did you have to take all water with you (assuming so since you were not concerned with navigating to a point)? Are there wells that can be used for re-supply?

cheers

We carried a minimum of 100 liters of water in plastic water bottles on deep desert trips. In Arabia, plastic water bottles in boxes made it easy to carry a large volume of water in our Defender. There are .5 liter and 1.5 liter plastic bottles in cardboard boxes that stack nicely in the Defender or on the Brownchurch rack. We only used water for cooking and drinking - not for bathing. For washing up, we used moist/wet wipes that had a light scent to them. They are quite refreshing, a quick wipedown with a couple of wipes makes you feel like you are clean - at least clean enough for a nine day desert run.

Plastic water bottles meant that there was no risk we would ever loose our water from a tank that might spring a leak. Plastic water bottles also make it easy to ration water. You know how many bottles each person gets each day, and you easily monitor the critical water supply. There are no water surprises that could result in disaster or premature termination of the expedition.

All of our deep desert trips in the Empty Quarter were done in the winter when the ambient temperature varied between 40 - 75 degrees farenheit. Not much sweating that time of year, and that meant water consumption was minimal. We usually travelled with 3 to 7 vehicles - mostly Defenders in deep desert, and there was plenty of water to go around if someone ran low.

Even in the Empty Quarter, there are wells dug in the desert sands, and the wells are spaced at a distance that a camel could travel without running out of water with a bedouin riding or walking alongside. Some of the wells are more than fifty feet deep, but you could get water if you needed to. There are also bedouin gas stations in deep desert where you could pick up some water if you needed it. Bedouins also drive water trucks far into deep desert, and you can find water in the strangest of places.

We never did deep desert when the ambient temperature was 120 F. It's too dangerous - you can die of heat stroke in 2 hours. In the summer, we would leave Riyadh at 5pm on the weekend, drive to the top of a sand dune 50 km outside of the city, set up camp, and enjoy the night sky. By the time you go to sleep, the desert temperatures are low enough be comfortable sleeping on top of the dune. And if you get a nice breeze, it's a big bonus.

 

[Lostmanifesto]

Dave,

Thank you so much for taking the time to share this as others have said. I would hope to see someone like you teaching a class at the 2012 Overland Expo. Your knowledge would be such an amazing treat to learn from first hand. Looking forward to reading more!

Thank you,

Jordan

 

[maxingout]

HI Maxingout,
I can't tell you how much I enjoyed and appreciated your article. I travel the southwest USA deserts a lot and consider myself pretty good at navigating. But we don't have anything on the scale that you are describing. I have never seen such a good description of the Arabian deserts as you have given (except maybe the film Lawrence Of Arabia ). And your purpose was not to show pretty pictures but to give a method for survival. Then to top it off, it is well written. I'm very impressed.

BTW, I always carry a compass in my Jeep. It's a Brunton handheld. I could never find a permanent spot on the vehicle for mounting that did not affect compass readings too much. You have inspired me to brush up on my compass skills. Almost always I use my permanently mounted Panasonic Toughbook laptop computer with Terrain Navigator software and a Garmin GPS to give real-time vehicle location on the maps as displayed on the computer. This stuff is wired to the vehicle electrical system. That way I won't run out of battery power. Somehow I suspect this scheme would not work in Arabia due to the lack of suitable maps. But it works very well if the proper maps are available for the software and they are for anywhere in the US. But, it does have tendency to make my compass skills lazy.

Thanks for the terrific read, Sparky

The Plastimo IRIS 100 is actually a handheld compass. You can use it inside the vehicle if you want to know a general direction, but if you really want to get an exact bearing, you remove it from the mount, and use it far enough from the vehicle that the car doesn't affect the compass reading.

On the Defender, I experimented with location on the compass, and I centered it on the windshield and found it gave pretty good readings as long as I wasn't running the heater or AC. I will shortly be mounting another IRIS 100 on my latest truck.

Maps were not a problem in Arabia. The US Geologic survey created 1:500,000 maps of the country, and we used photocopies of those maps for navigational purposes. The Saudis actually came out with a book of maps for the entire Kingdom that was also 1:500,000, and these were actual satellite maps with superimposed roads, cities, wadis, and they were very useful and accurate. We also used aeronautical charts.

In the real world of Arabian navigation, the maps helped define the navigation problem, and the bedouin tracks were the best solution whatever navigational challenge you faced. Bedouins don't wander aimlessly in the desert. Their tracks all go somewhere, and if you use your compass to make sure that you are traveling in the same direction, you will get where you want to go. Those bedouin tracks define what is possible in a wily desert terrain.

The Empty Quarter was different, because you travelled cross country in areas where there might not be any tracks. And if you do that, you need to be sure that you have plenty of fuel, because the direction that you are travelling may have geographical barriers or impassible sand mountains that force big detours on your intended track.