Orienteering

1
Orienteering
Coe-Brown Northwood Academy Physical Education
Department
2
History and objective

• What is orienteering?
• Orienteering is an outdoor sport in which
  participants navigate routes between isolated
  control points using a compass and a map. The
  emphasis is on map-reading and direction finding
  skills. It is popular as both a recreational
  sport and a competitive sport. The sport has
  several forms. Some of these variations are
• Cross-country orienteering with results judged on
  a time basis.
• Line orienteering of a set course with
  undisclosed control points. Success depends on
  accuracy.
• Route orienteering requires participants to mark
  their map correctly with the controls.
• Score orienteering has numerous controls set up,
  each allocated points according to difficulty.
  Participants score points by locating as many
  controls as they can in a given time.
• Regaining is a similar cross-country navigation
  event for teams. The classic Rogaine is a 24-hour
  event. This sport originated in Victoria in 1947
  from university cross-country events. The name
  was coined in 1973.
• Wayfaring is a term sometimes used to describe
  casual orienteering where a course is followed at
  a recreational pace. This is for people who just
  like to walk but with purpose and structure.

• Where did it all begin?
• The word 'orienteering' appears to have two
  claims to its origin. One I found was that it was
  a coined word registered (as a trade name) in
  Canada and the U.S.A. The other is associated
  with the very early history of the sport which
  claims that the word was used by the Military
  Academy, Sweden in 1886 to mean 'crossing unknown
  territory with the aid of a map and compass' (A
  Summary of the History of Orienteering prepared
  by Bertil Nordenfelt).
• In 1895 orienteering competitions were held for
  the first time by the military garrisons in the
  united kingdom of Sweden/Norway. It is known that
  'compass and map' races were held in British army
  sports events in the early years of this century.
  However, the origins of orienteering as a sport
  are generally recognized as being Scandinavian.
  In 1918, a youth leader, Ernst Killander used
  this type of activity in training to encourage
  track athletes back to competitive running which
  at the time was in decline.
• On March 25th 1918 he organized the first
  official event over a 12km course with 3
  controls. There were 155 competitors with the
  winner completing the course in 1hr 25min 39s.
  The sport proved to be attractive to a wide range
  of people and quickly spread throughout Sweden in
  the 1920's.
• In 1937 the first national competitive event was
  held in Sweden. In the following year Svenska
  Orienteringsforbundet became the national
  authority for all racing on foot and in 1961 the
  International Orienteering Federation was
  established. The founding members were Sweden,
  Norway, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, East
  Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The first
  European championships were held in 1962 and from
  1964 there have been annual World Championships.
• In Australia the first orienteering events were
  held around 1955. In 1965, Paddy Pallin, a well
  known bushwalker started an annual competition in
  N.S.W. which was a long trek through the bush in
  search of control points (often hidden under old
  buckets and the like). Although this was not
  truly orienteering, it was an important precursor
  to the introduction of the sport. In 1969 the
  first formal Australian event was held at
  Beaconsfield near Melbourne. This orienteering
  event was organized by Tom Andrews who had
  visited Sweden earlier in 1969 and had been to
  the Swedish orienteering championships.
• In 1985 Australia hosted the world championships
  at Bendigo and in 1988 staged the Asia-Pacific
  championships at St Helens in Tasmania.

3
Pace Count

• Walk 30 feet and count the number of times one
  foot touches the floor. Divide that number into
  30. The result is your pace count.
• Example 6 steps with the right foot equals a
  pace count of 5 feet.
• 6 steps /30 feet 5 feet

4
Bearings

• Every direction can be expressed as an angle
  with respect to north. In the military and the
  boy scouts, this is called an "azimuth", and
  bearings are expressed as a number of degrees.
  Orienteer's take the easy way out, just setting
  the angle on their compass and keeping the needle
  aligned, which in turn keeps them going in the
  right direction. A simple set of step-by-step
  instructions for setting a bearing on a base
  plate compass are
• place the compass on the map so that the
  direction of travel arrow is lined up with the
  way you want to go
• turn the compass housing so that the arrows
  engraved in its plastic base are parallel to the
  north arrows drawn on the map (make sure the
  arrowhead points north and not south)
• take the compass off the map and hold it in
  front of you so that the direction of travel
  arrow points directly ahead of you
• rotate your body until the compass needle is
  aligned with the arrow on the base of the compass
  housing
• pick out a prominent object ahead of you along
  the direction of travel, go to it, and repeat the
  process (this way you can detour around
  obstructions but still stay on your bearing)

• The first thing you need to learn, are the
  directions. North, South, East and West. Look at
  the figure and learn how they are. North is the
  most important.

5
Compass
6
Reading a Compass

• You want to go northwest. What you do, is that
  you find out where on the compass housing
  northwest is. Then you turn the compass housing
  so that northwest on the housing comes exactly
  there where the large direction of travel-arrow
  meets the housing.

• Hold the compass in your hand. And you'll have to
  hold it quite flat, so that the compass needle
  can turn. Then turn yourself, your hand, the
  entire compass, just make sure the compass
  housing doesn't turn, and turn it until the
  compass needle is aligned with the lines inside
  the compass housing.

7
Map Legends
Man made
Landforms
Linear
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Map Legends
Water
Vegetation
Rocks
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Vocabulary

• Leg The part of an orienteering course between
  two controls, or between the start and the first
  control, or the last control and the finish.
• Climb The amount of up-hill climbing (ignoring
  downhill travel) that must be done to complete a
  course.
• Pace Counting Counting the number of
  double-steps you take to estimate the distance
  you travel. (two words)
• attack point An easy-to-find landscape feature
  shown on the map from which the final approach to
  a control may be made. (two words)
• catching feature A long feature shown on the map
  running crosswise to one's direction of travel,
  and which will guide the runner toward the attack
  point. (two words)
• Handrail A long feature shown on the map running
  more or less parallel to one's direction of
  travel.
• steering mark An easily identifiable feature in
  the landscape not shown on the map, and is used
  by the orienteer to follow a bearing. (two words)
  
• North Orienteering maps show magnetic _____.
• Scale The size of the map compared to the area
  which it represents.
• Contour Line A brown line on the map that is at
  constant altitude. When you cross such a line on
  the map, you are going up or down hill (two
  words)
• Form Line A brown dashed line on the map which
  indicates a visible ridge or mound which is not
  high enough to be shown with the map's contour
  lines. (two words)
• Dog-leg A control setting in which the orienteer
  is likely to use the same route leaving a control
  as approaching it. A flaw in course design
  because it may give an approaching orienteer an
  unfair advantage if, by chance, he/she meets
  someone leaving the control. (two words,
  hyphenated)
• Pace A double-step.
• Black Used for man-made (cultural) features such
  as roads and buildings, trails, railroads, and
  boundaries.
• blue Used for water (hydrographic) features
  such as lakes and rivers.
• brown Used for elevation (hypsographic)
  features shown by contour lines.
• green Used for vegetation, such as woodland
  cover, scrub, orchards, and vineyards.
• Red Used in USGS maps for important roads and
  for the land grid (public land survey system).
• Purple Used in USGS maps for features added from
  aerial photographs during map revisions. The
  changes are not field checked.

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Worksheet

• 1. What are the five parts of a compass?
• 2.What are the four directions used in
  Orienteering?
• 3. Explain how you determine your stride length.
• 4.Draw five Map legends for the following
  Landform, Water, Rock, Vegetation, Linear, Man
  made
• 5.Define ALL 19 vocabulary words.
• 6. Draw and label a compass.
• 7. Explain how to read a compass.

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Work cited

• http//www.learn-orienteering.org/old/lesson1.html
  
• http//www.williams.edu/Biology/Faculty_Staff/hwil
  liams/Orienteering/compass.html
• http//www.williams.edu/Biology/Faculty_Staff/hwil
  liams/Orienteering/legend.html
• http//homepage.eircom.net/orienteering/what/lege
  nd.html
• http//ideaplace.org/ORIENTEERING/VOCAB/OGenTermsT
  woV.html