Identify Compass Bearings

So far, we’ve looked at two types of compass bearings. There’s a third type of bearing that is used today, usually in surveying or in navigation of ships and aircraft. It’s also used in army maneuvers. These are called bearings from true North or three figure bearings. An example is the bearing 135 degrees. True North bearings are always measured in a clockwise direction starting from North. Let’s look at the examples, we have already discussed and write them as true North three figure bearings. We’ll start with one of the bearings we have already looked at, North 70 degrees East. Once again we start from B. We head North and swing around 70 degrees to A. Now we know we have started from North and we’ve swung 70 degrees in a clockwise direction. As a true North bearing, we say this is zero seven zero degrees from true North. Notice that we haven’t just called it 70 degrees but we have made up with three figure number placing a zero in front of the 70 degree. All true North bearings are written as three figure numbers.