Compass Course Navigation

User Manual

Build a compass-and-pace course. Run it, or teach it.

Mobile Screenshots

The Problem It Solves

You can see something — smoke on a ridgeline, a distress flare, a downed aircraft, an animal, a suspicious vehicle — but you can't reach it, and "somewhere over that way" isn't a location anyone can act on.

If you and a teammate (or you, moving between two spots) can each take a compass bearing toward the same thing, the point where those bearings cross is its location.

This is classical resection, the same technique search-and-rescue teams, surveyors, and foresters have used for decades — Compass Triangulation just does the trigonometry, the mapping, and the reporting for you, in the field, on your phone.

Instructor Mode: Building a Course

1. Set a Start Point

Tap on the map (or use your current GPS location) to place where the course begins.

2. Add Legs

Each leg is one segment of the course: a heading (in degrees) and a distance. Tap Add Leg and fill in both. Add as many legs as you want — there's no cap.

3. Add a Hint (Pro to author, free for students to see)

Each leg has an optional description field. Use it for a landmark or piece of context — "old oak tree by the creek," "cairn on the ridge line." This is what turns a bare sequence of numbers into a course that actually teaches terrain awareness. Authoring hints is a Pro feature; once you've added one, every student sees it for free, both on the map and in their own waypoint list — nothing you build for your students is ever hidden from them.

4. Reorder or Delete Legs (reordering is Pro)

As the course takes shape, drag legs into a new order if the sequence needs to change, or delete a leg entirely. Deleting is free; reordering is a Pro feature.

5. Share the Course

From the sharing screen, generate a QR code or link for students to load the course onto their own device. Your declination setting travels with it, so the course resolves to the same real-world headings regardless of what declination is set on the student's phone. If Compass Course Navigator is already installed, opening a shared link takes them straight into the course — no detour through a browser.

Pro Tools for Instructors

Saved Course Library — save named courses and reuse them across multiple groups or difficulty levels, rather than rebuilding from scratch each time.
Course Report PDF — a complete document: the full route on a map, every leg with heading, distance, coordinates, and any hint attached, plus total distance and leg count — with two QR codes (get the app / the actual course data) built in, ready to hand to a co-instructor or attach to a lesson plan.
GPX Export — your course in a format any GPS or mapping tool already reads.
Live Magnetic Declination — fetched automatically from your GPS position instead of looked up by hand.
Offline Maps — download the area you'll actually be training in before you go somewhere without signal, which is most places worth training in.

Student Mode: Running a Course

1. Load a Course

Scan the instructor's QR code, or open the link they sent you.

2. Enter Your Name (Optional)

If you'd like your name on your performance report afterward, enter it before you start — it's remembered for next time too.

3. Choose Practice or Test

Practice Mode — GPS stays on, so you can see exactly where you are relative to the planned course while you're still learning the technique. A good way to build confidence before the real thing.
Test Mode — GPS is hidden. This is the actual test: can you navigate the course using only your compass heading and a distance estimate (pace count), the way the technique is meant to work?

4. Navigate the Course

Follow each leg's heading and distance in order. As you reach each waypoint, mark it cleared. If the instructor attached a hint to a waypoint, you'll see it here and on the map — a useful check that you're actually in the right spot.

5. Generate Your Performance Report (Free)

After a Test run, generate a PDF showing the course as planned against your actual GPS track, with the error at each waypoint clearly marked — how far off you ended up, and in which direction. This is free for every student, on purpose: the whole point of the app is teaching, and your own performance record shouldn't sit behind a paywall.

Pro Features in Practice (only available in IOS App)

Backup & Restore — export all courses and settings as a file you control

PDF Field Report — Tap the report button to generate a complete, shareable document: the map with every bearing and the computed intersection drawn on it, a table of every bearing with both heading types, coordinates in three formats, your confidence rating and uncertainty radius, and the nearest address — plus two QR codes (one to get the app, one carrying your actual bearing data) so anyone you hand it to can pull it up themselves.

Offline Maps — Before you lose signal, draw a rectangle over the area you're about to operate in, choose how much extra zoom detail you want, and download it. The app shows a size estimate before you commit, and a running total of what's actually stored on your device afterward — this isn't a passive cache, it's a deliberate "I'm going here" action you take in advance.

Keep Screen Awake — Locks your screen on while you're actively working, so a timeout doesn't interrupt you mid-triangulation.

A Typical Session, Start to Finish

Instructor: builds a six-leg course around a local park, adds a hint to two of the trickier waypoints, and shares it via QR code to the group.
Students: scan the code, enter their names, and each run it once in Practice mode to get a feel for the route.
Students: run it again in Test mode — GPS hidden — navigating by heading and pace count alone.
Students: generate their performance report and hand it to the instructor (or keep it — it's theirs either way).
Instructor: reviews results across the group, and generates their own Course Report PDF as a record of exactly what was run that day.

Tablet Screenshots

By accessing this application you hereby agree to the terms of our Software Disclaimer and of our Privacy Policy.

Open Source Acknowledgments

This app uses the following open-source libraries:

html5-qrcode — mebjas (Minhaz Av). Apache License 2.0. https://github.com/mebjas/html5-qrcode

Report abuse