Vehicular Land Navigation System C1

[Ed Storey]

The Navigational Set, Land Vehicular, C-l, (NAVAID) was developed to provide a self-contained navigational aid, independent of radio assistance, which would give positional and navigational information to commanders of vehicles in armoured and other units under the following conditions:
(1) Closed-down, during mobile operations by day or night, and under nuclear threat conditions.
(2) During conditions of darkness and poor visibility, e.g., fog and smoke.
(3) On featureless or poorly mapped terrain, including the Arctic.

Despite the ease of operation and advantages that were provided by the NAV AID, the art of map reading was still of primary importance and was not to be neglected.

The equipment did not require radio assistance for its operation and by using a gyro-compass it is was affected by variations in the earth's magnetic field or in the magnetic characteristics of the vehicle.

This device was designed to indicate the location of vehicles to within an average accuracy of 1 % of the distance travelled and the heading to within .75 degrees.

This device could be used in unmapped terrain. Under these conditions the· counters on the Indicator Heading and Position were set to an arbitrary reading and an X (representing the present position of the vehicle) marked on the plastic map holder of the Plotter with a china pencil. The vehicle could return to the original start point, after completing a mission, by the commander directing the arrow of light, which corresponds to the movement of the vehicle) toward the X until the arrow returns to the X. The counters were then checked to see that they reflect the arbitrary reading set at the beginning of the mission.

The NAVAID could only be used maps with scales of 1/25,000; 1/50,000; 1/100,000 and 1/250,000. Prior to the first run of the day, the Compass required an initial 30 to 60 minutes warm-up and settling period. The compass had some difficulty maintaining its design accuracy at the higher speeds encountered in road travel. When moving over hilly terrain, the actual distance travelled on the ground is greater than the distance travelled
on the map. Therefore, periodically, the actual heading and position on the ground had to be checked against the heading and position displayed by the NAVAID. If there was a variation appropriate adjustments had to be made.