Where Am I at?

What a common question.  It has been my fortune many times in my life to not know where I am at.  With the advent of GPS, we are able to instantly know our exact location within plus or minus a certain parameter, but always close enough to get us to our destination.  As the technology improves, the factor of error becomes smaller.  In this beautiful age of gadgetry, we often rely on batteries to make the tools work.  This can be a very unfortunate issue if that is all we know how to do.  While I was in the military, we would often teach other soldiers how to use known landmarks, or their known position to help them find themselves.  This awesome method is known as triangulation.

Through triangulation, you are able to figure out based on the information available to you, where you are.  In the first example, you decide to drive some forest service roads.  You know that you just came from point "X" and you haven't been paying attention for a while.  After making a series of turns, you finally decide that you are lost.  Lucky for you, you know where you came from,

In a much simpler example, you are in a city.  In many US cities, the streets are at times laid in a grid and are labeled which direction they go.  If this is not the case, then it still doesn't matter.  Just by looking at your map, you can orient yourself based solely on the direction that you are walking.  This in itself, is a very basic form of triangulation.

Where Does it all Start?

Before a mission is flown, a flight plan must be included.  This is created using what is called a sectional.  An example of a sectional is found at www.skyvector.com.  This is generally like a topographical map, except that the contour lines are absent, and are replaced with other land features.  It is like a flat terrain model.