Military Sketching and Reconnaissance Volume 2 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 Excerpt: ...make it, and as you have no ready-made scale you must make one for yourself. Settle in your mind what length of line you will call, say, 100 yards or 50 yards, then cut a little bit of paper, and with it mark off these measurements all along your scale, and number them in the usual way. Afterwards, if you come across a foot-rule or anything with inches marked on it, you can measure how many yards on your scale go to the inch, and you can then give a title to your scale, as well as the R. F. If, however, you happen to have a foot-rule, &c., by all means make use of it to decide your scale, and apportion a certain number of yards to the inch. You know about what scale you should use for the particular kind of sketch you are making, so you can arrive at the number of yards to the inch to fix on. A scale of 220 yards to the inch is 8 inches to the mile, which will give an idea of the best scale to work on. Let us take an example of rather a large scale--viz. 300 yards to an inch. To draw the scale: Mark off inches along the line; divide the left-hand division into three (by folding a piece of paper an inch long into three); then figure the scale as shown in fig. 1, Plate IX. To give a title to this scale, you might describe it simply as 'Scale of 300 yards to 1 inch, ' or 'Scale of 5-87 inches to 1 mile '; and the R. F. would be rtrsw Now, having made the plan of the ground and, as usual, having drawn-in the direction of as many watercourses as possible, proceed to contour the sketch. Contouring without instruments cannot, of course, be very accurate, but with care it can be done accurately enough to be of considerable value for military purposes. Men who have had much practice in contouring with a clinometer often become experts at estimating slopes (and ev...