T-30: LeJog 2023 – Navigation training

In exactly one month I will be in Land’s End and the LeJog 2023 is about to start. Ever since I heard about the event 7 years ago, I hoped to have the opportunity to attend one day. And now it is happening. How did this go about? On almost all classic car rallye’s I did so far I did the maps – mostly because my wife prefers this over navigation. When I read a post on the MGDC forum earlier this year that someone is looking for a navigator, it took me a few weeks to think about it. During the Highland Games I met Max – who was co-pilot on a Mini Cooper last year. We talked quite a bit about it and it sparked my interest even more. Later I learned that he could not get time-off from work this year and his seat was vacant.

But I also had some doubts. Would my skills and experience be good enough? Well – how will I find out if I never try? In June I met Martin and I am happy to be this navigator and co-pilot this year on a 1971 Mini Cooper S. So how to you prepare for an event like this? When you sign up for a Hero-ERA Club Membership you get access to Navigation Training courses. During our summer vacation I did about 20 out of the ~80 different available. The vast majority of Classic Car Rallys in Germany use Tulip and Arrows style navigation. Herringbones are also used sometimes – and I kind of like those.

But LeJog also uses “Spot Height”, Gridlines, Map Symbols, “Do and Do not Pass” and a few other types of navigational tasks. Today I completed all but 10 maps. From the first 20 trainings I only had about 50% correct. But the training courses are really helpful if you take you time and try to understand, why you didn’t find the correct route. I kept going and on the last set of 15 maps I just completed – I had 11 without and mistake, one with an error due to a map feature that was just not visible on the poor print out and three with really very small errors.

I am looking forward to this Sunday, when I have the chance to attend a training session from someone that has done this rally a couple of times – Horst from team FlyingSquirrel.