Lets say I get a radio report like this:
For the Long (Longitude) I'll look across the top of the map. In this case we're looking at
0° 43' E. 0° is the Royal Observatory, in England which is slightly west of London, so we'll start to look near there.
Longitude are lines drawn North to South across the globe. The
0° 43' E is read as "
0 Degrees and 43 minutes East". There are 60 minutes, which uses the
' symbol, in each degree. Each degree is also 120km on the SH5 map.
So our contact will be around 86.5km east from 0 degrees.
Latitude are lines drawn West to East across the globe. The
51° 30' N is read as "
51 Degrees and 30 minutes North". There are 60 minutes, which uses the
' symbol, in each degree. Each degree is also 120km on the SH5 map.
Since Latitude (the "Lat" in the radio report) starts at 0 degrees at the equator we'll count upwards from there. We'll find that 51
° is just south of London. The 30 minutes means it'll be half way to 52
°. So about 60km north of the 51° N line.
You can see that in this picture:
So there you see that the contact was found half way between
51 and 52 degrees north and most of the way to 1 degree east. Where the two yellow lines meet you'll see the contact which was reported.
It's good to remember that anything LONG W is going to be west of London and anything LONG E is east of London.
Anything greater then 50° LAT N will be from the bottom of England north and anything less than 50° LAT N will be south of England.
It's also interesting to note that usually coordinates are given in Lat/Long order rather than Long/Lat as it is in SH5.