MART Vol. II MO/MP - NESA - Civil Air Patrol

identifying a location according to its position within the grid. It is very easy toexchange location information over the radio using the grid system. With theknown grid positions, other team members can quickly determine on their owncharts the location of a sighting or point of interest.Grid systems are especially helpful when locating a position that has nonearby distinguishable landmarks or features, such as buildings, roads, or lakes.Grid systems will work anywhere, even in the middle of large lakes, in deepwoods, or in swamps. Anyone can develop a workable system provided that allmembers of the search team use the same grid system.The Civil Air Patrol has found it useful to construct similar grid systems onaeronautical sectional charts for search and rescue operations. Sectional chartscover a land area approximately seven degrees of longitude in width and fourdegrees of latitude in height. Some maps, like city maps, already have gridsystems constructed on them, but sectional charts do not. Below we discuss theways to grid sectional charts for SAR purposes.5.10.1 Standardized Latitude and Longitude Grid SystemThe Standardized Latitude and Longitude Grid System is used by some CAPWings and by many federal and state agencies. It can be used on any kind ofchart that has lines of latitude and longitude already marked. In this system, 1-degree blocks are identified by the intersection of whole numbers of latitude andlongitude, such as 36-00N and 102-00W. These points are always designatedwith the latitude first, such as 36/102, and they identify the area north and west ofthe intersection of these two lines. In Figure 5-19, the gray shading identifiessection 36/102.37-00N36-00N103-00W102-00WFigure 5-19Next, the 1° grid is divided into four quadrants using the 30' lines of latitudeand longitude. Label each quadrant A through D; the northwest quadrant being36/102A, the northeast 36/102B, the southwest 36/102C, and the southeast36/102D, as shown in Figure 5-20.94