OCAD
Improve your map training with OCAD
Estimating Distance Estimating distance is always present in any orienteering course you run, though most of the time this process is subconscious. No matter what course you are running, no matter what the terrain and its difficulty, always, when you look up from the map, you have to sort out the objects you see and match them with the information you remember from the map. Doing this, you always relate the objects in the terrain according to their nature, size and to the distance at which they are located from your current position. Acquiring these skills comes with time and experience, but as with other orienteering techniques, even estimating distance can be trained OCAD can be an essential tool with which you can easily prepare exercises to train your distance estimation. Preparing the training in OCAD is similar to preparing ‘Corridor Training’ which we introduced in the second part of the ‘Improve Your Map Training with OCAD’ series last year. Yet, the methods differ in a few steps, therefore we advise you to follow these instructions carefully: 1) Create (first click ‘File’, then ‘New’) a new OCAD 8 ‘Normal map’ file in a scale 1:10,000 or 1:15,000 - depending on the scale of the original map on which you’ll be setting the course. In this file, upload the original .ocd file of the map as a template - click the ‘Template’ option in the upper Menu bar, then click open. 2) In the upper Menu bar select ‘Symbol’ and when the Option panel unfolds, select the command ‘Load symbols from...’ (picture 1). Then select the symbol file. You will find it under: C:\Program Files\Ocad8\Symbol\Course setting 10 000.ocd or C:\Program Files\Ocad8\Symbol\Course setting 15 000.ocd depending on the scale of the map you are using. Open the new symbol file with Course setting symbols with which the Map drawing symbols will be replaced. 3) Set a ‘Star Course’ using the course-setting symbols in the ‘Symbol box’ on the right.
24 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2006
4) In the ‘Symbol box’ select the symbol 760.0 Background Control Descriptions, switch into the Curve mode ( ) and hide all parts of the map in such a way that you end up having only a circular corridor of the original map revealed, in which all the controls will appear. 5) Click the ‘File’ option in the upper Menu bar and select ‘Print’. Select here ‘Entire map’ or ‘One Page’ and click ‘Print’. Final Tips: •T his training should be run in such a way that your trainees head out for each of the controls from the start triangle. After finding the control, they go back to the start. The training should be done at high speed in order to simulate competition-like conditions. •T he size of the revealed map area in front or behind each control affects the difficulty of the training. The less area you reveal the more difficult for your trainees. •D istances between start and individual controls should vary in order to make the training more challenging for your trainees and also in order to force them to be active in estimating of distance. •T his training also has a huge psychological benefit. With each control your trainees start orienteering a new, from scratch. This way, they easily recover from previous mistakes and can fully focus just on the next control. From a coaching point of view, it gives you an opportunity to have immediate feedback on what your trainees are doing in the forest. •T his training, apart from estimating distance, also teaches your trainees how to immediately relocate on the map. This may be very useful for them during orienteering races; e.g.. after going through green areas, where they mostly fight their way through, just trying to keep their direction without properly reading the map. Jan Skřička Download OCAD 8 Demo at www.ocad.com Reprinted from Orienteering Today magazine.
