Translations:Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Recreation/Orienteering (General Conference)/46/en

9. Explain resection and its use.

Resection is a method of using a compass and a map to determine your current position. The first step is to find a feature of the landscape that you can also identify on the map. This could be a mountain peak, an intersection, a bridge, or even a utility pole (some topographic maps mark where high-voltage lines are, as well as the position of the poles that hold them up). The closer these two landmarks are to 90° offset from one another, the more accurate the resection will be. For instance, if the first landmark is at 115°, choose the second one as close to either 205° (115°+90°) or 25° (115°-90°) as you can. This is not a hard and fast rule, and the prominence of the landmark may well be more important than the 90° offset. Once you have shot an azimuth to the first landmark, calculate the back azimuth, and plot a line on your map from the landmark towards (and past) your current position (which should be somewhere on that line). Be sure to correct for declination when plotting this line. Then shoot the azimuth of the second landmark, and plot it's back azimuth on the map as well, again correcting for declination. If your readings are accurate and your plotting was done carefully, your current position should be very close to where these two lines intersect.