Good Navigation Book I've Been Reading

I enjoy reading navigation books, but find most of them lacking. I recently stumbled upon a new-for-me book on land navigation titled "The Essential Wilderness Navigator: How to Find Your Way In the Great Outdoors, Second Edition", 2001, by David Seidman with Paul Cleveland. Its published by Ragged Mountain Press.

It does a good job of describing maps, compasses, and map & compass navigation including how to use land features to improve your navigation abilities.

I do wish they had recognized the value of the UTM grid system. Instead they say "Don't worry about it - it's of no use to us." I suppose UTM doesn't come into the picture so much unless you're using a GPS to. What they don't cover on UTM coordinates in this book you can learn about at http://www.maptools.com .

Regardless, it does provide nice clear descriptions of map & compass navigation skills. I especially like the section that talks about using nature for navigation clues. They also have a short section on what to do if you find yourself lost. It focuses on practical methods for getting unlost again, but it recognizes the "last option, staying put and signaling for help".

For GPS use I still like the now out-of-print "GPS Land Navigation" by Micheal Ferguson better since it describes how to use a map, compass, and GPS in coordination, which is important now that GPS's are in wide use. I do suggest you try to find this book if you use a GPS.

If you know of another good navigation with GPS book I'd love to hear about it. I also recently bought "Wilderness Navigation: Finding Your Way Using Map, Compass, Altimeter & GPS" by Bob Burns & Mike Burns, but haven't gotten the chance to read through it yet.

Ken K.

The ultimate authority on navigation has been & probably always will be: "The American Navigator" by Nathaniel Bowditch. It is updated regularly on all types of navigation, navigation equipment, charts, maps, etc. One can be found in the reference section of large libraries.

wildman800,

The American Navigator is available for download [free] in a *.PDF from several websites. I believe that it may also be located thorugh a link on the maptools website. I've downloaded it several times over the years and it has provided many hours of intriguing reading. A google search should provide several sources. IIRC, it was also discussed on ETS in the past.

Regards,
Comanche7

I am working my way thru GPS Made Easy, by Lawrence Letham. Since I am still a rookie in GPS'n, I am learning a lot from it. Not much help for learning map and compass tho...

Hi All,

Meant to mention in my post last night that the American Navigator download can be time consuming as it is approx. 42mB in size and the book itself is about 882 pages long.

That said, it is still a very worthy acquisition and I would encourage folks to download it and look it over at least once. IIRC the download took a few minutes on DSL, so those folks on dial up may want to plan on packing and repacking their various kits while it is being downloaded.

With regard to the several recent and past threads about GPS's, PLB's and various map datums, there is a really good explaination of these subject areas.

The AN also has complete sections dedicated to satellite navigation as well as containing information on how to use a sextant properly, providing all the needed tables and related explainations aand another for emergency navigation when your main systems are in-op.

Regards,
Comanche7

http://tinyurl.com/r42fo

American Practical Navigator download page..download it all or by chapter.

"The Essential Wilderness Navigator: How to Find Your Way In the Great Outdoors, Second Edition", 2001, by David Seidman with Paul Cleveland. Its published by Ragged Mountain Press...It does a good job of describing maps, compasses, and map & compass navigation including how to use land features to improve your navigation abilities."

I agree with you. For neophyte land navigators or those wanting a refresher, this is the best book out there. It is well written with good illustrations and in experience teaches faster than any other map/compass guide I've used for land navigation classes. It's also authored by people with authentic back-country navigating backgrounds who aren't trying to stretch their nautical sailing experiences or participation in a few adventure races into a land navigation book.

Once you're beyond that stage, there are more specialized books out there that deal with more advanced navigation techniques or environments. A few I can think of include the British MOD's Manual of Map Reading and Land Navigation, the U.S. Army's Manual FM 21-26, Mooers' Finding Your Way in the Outdoors, Muehrcke's Map Use, and Johnson's The Ultimate Desert Handbook (desert navigation).

jshannon,

You beat me to it, that is exactly the site that I was referring to.

Your tiny url link is much more concise than my long winded directions would have been.

Thanks,
Comanche7

Thanks for the info and links folks. I can't wait to dig into it!

"The Essential Wilderness Navigator: How to Find Your Way In the Great Outdoors, Second Edition" is a good starter book, which I own as well.
It is a good primer, one of the better ones.
After that there are about a million left to read...

One thing I noted with this book as well as half a dozen others is
They ignore the Grid-magnetic angle and focus on true-magnetic as though grid was only for surveyors. I wonder how many other forum members have noticed this ?
In view of the fact that such a large number of maps use UTM (with a printed overlay) in fact the Grid-magnetic is paramount.
In fact for most maps other than aviation or marine it's true or geographical north that's not used (unless your doing celestial navigation). Of course the US Army FM covers it extensively.

"One thing I noted with this book as well as half a dozen others is they ignore the Grid-magnetic angle and focus on true-magnetic as though grid was only for surveyors. I wonder how many other forum members have noticed this ?
In view of the fact that such a large number of maps use UTM (with a printed overlay) in fact the Grid-magnetic is paramount."

The reason U.S. authored map/compass books use true-magnetic is that the vast majority of civilian U.S. maps are oriented to true north. When orienting a map with a compass, or when finding a map bearing using a baseplate compass as a protractor, students were taught to find a true bearing by aligning compass to map using either a map margin or a true map meridian line such as a line of longitude (some books simply advise using the UTM grid lines and ignoring grid/true differences, a poor practice). UTM grids are a relatively recent addition in U.S. topo map development and UTM positioning was given little importance in U.S. civilian topo map land navigation, particularly as UTM is metric-based, while U.S. civilian topo maps and users were inch-scale oriented. Remember, our topos mostly come from the USGS, a non-military agency with a background towards land surveying using inch-scale and geographic coordinate systems. We never really converted to the metric system, as did the U.S. military, and that provides part of the explanation.

The other reason is that most U.S. land-based recreational navigators have been uniformly taught to locate themselves on the map through terrain association with landmarks (this is the 'orienteering' sport influence), and most U.S. instructional books simply follow this trend. Even when using compass-based techniques such as resection or triangulation, the emphasis has been on locating oneself on the map via recognizable landmarks instead of finding oneself through position coordinates. Also, because of the weight, complexity, and bulk of the equipment, radio and astral-based position finding techniques were almost unknown by most hikers and backpackers.

It was felt by many authors, probably correctly, that teaching three separate 'norths' and their appropriate conversions might be beyond the capacity of many a tenderfoot land navigator.

Only in the last few years, with the advent of the compact, portable GPS, have U.S. recreational users begun to express an interest in UTM grids, metric-based map scales, and position-finding techniques using such coordinate systems. (The USGS claims it will complete its long-promised National Digital Map with user-chosen metric or inch-based scales and grid overlays to be downloaded and printed locally in place of paper maps - we'll see. Canada recently abruptly reversed its decision to discontinue its paper topos in favor of digitized downloads after a storm of criticism when it was learned that expensive, high-quality large-scale printers would be required to match the quality of former topo maps, and printed copies of the quality required could cost upwards of $25 from retail sources.)

Contrast this background with the U.K., which has 'thought metric' in land navigation for years, with handy 1:25,000 and 1:50,000 metric scale topo maps, and taught beginners to find map bearings with a compass by orienting the latter using grid lines, converting from magnetic to grid north and vice-versa. Their recreational topo map system is derived from the military, (British Army Ordnance Survey), consequently their entire teaching system is geared to a National Grid Reference System (essentially, UTM), metric systems of coordinate measurement and scale, and grid-magnetic conversions as taught by the military. Grab a British book on map/compass use and you will immediately notice the emphasis on learning UTM grids and the grid-magnetic conversion process. Another example of the effect of national preferences results from the lack of extreme declination adjustments required in the U.K. - so compasses with adjustable declination have not achieved the popularity they have in the States.

Any British map/compass book such as Wally Keay's 'Land Navigation : Routefinding with Map & Compass' will demonstrate what I'm talking about.

Tim,
You are a source of much information.
I did know that the ordinance survey maps had large Grid-True differences, but now I understand why.
Funny aviation maps are always Lat-Long and true with magnetic variation lines in magenta.
The old US Army FM (and field practice) was my early exposure or torture ?.
The USGS (and I wonder how much the old DMA is behind it too) is going to give us more goodies, well we will see and hope.
Guess it's better than false N/E in the US Surveyor Foot right Units?

I also like the way Michael Ferguson's Book has a list of the Highest Elevation in each U.S. County, in the back! [color:"black"] [/color] [email]ScottRezaLogan[/email]