Be Expert with Map and Compass

Awesome piece of history ! Practice map in the book!! Super detailed and full on instruction manual..so happy I found this gem !

This book taught me to be an orienteer. Easy to understand, lots of examples. Includes a topo map, with directions that match the map. Includes quizzes that reference the map. Lets you practice in the comfort of your home.

This book provides a good general introduction to map and compass work, with some more advanced techniques. The portions dealing with how to plot a course using a topo map are particularly well-presented, as the author's primary focus seems to be competative orienteering. The author does not provide particularly useful guidance for poor visibility/nighttime navigation, but one cannot be perfect on everything.

An old standard that is still around for a good reason. We rely too heavily on our tech these days. So a lot of us keep a compass handy. What good is that without some rudimentary working knowledge? This book is simple, common sense, gives good explanations, and helps readers to develop the skills to use a compass. Funny thing is I’ve used my compass in cities more than out in the boonies so far. It’s fun and a good skill to have. This book is a good start.

Great read

Very easy to see why this is considered a classic for compass navigation. It's well-written, extremely easy to follow, and filled not just with practical know-how but also some great games to get one started. The included practice map is of great help, as are the "quizzes" that run throughout the book. Checking my own calculations against the answers in the back of the book was of great help. The only thing I noticed was that the page numbers referenced as containing the answers were off in my version. This was not a big deal, as it was quite easy to figure out by the headings. This book has given me the confidence to navigate off the beaten path. I have been an avid hiker for 30 years, but always on trails in New Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts. Now I feel comfortable exploring the woods off the path, and know that I can make my way back to the trailhead. So happy that I finally learned how to really use map and compass skills together.

I had previous experience with this book in a college class I took on map reading and interpretation. We used some of the exercises but I didn’t have first hand experience with the book itself. The first thing to understand is that the author was a champion at competitive orienteering and the inventor of the Silva compass. Those two points overshadow the book. And while I am on that note I will proceed with the bad points of the book in order if sinfulness. Firstly, this book is quite old and has been through many revisions and updates. The later by the original author’s daughter. This leads to two finer points: One is that he book is very repetitive of some points that have little to do with becoming skilled in navigation; The second is that the book references information or illustrations contained elsewhere in the book and are occasionally not accurate which can cause some minor confusion as there are a lot of illustrations. I also don’t personally don’t care for how the book is written. There is an almost juvenile feel to the assertions that you will find joy in this or that activity or that this will be an activity that you will want to repeat. This becomes more annoying as it comes closer to the points of competitive orienteering which I have no interest in. And this is at the cost of not covering anything other than the most basic methods of plotting location and nothing at all on cartesian coordinates in any form. And that brings me to the worst sin, wastefulness. The information is presented in a very long winded fashion. It makes following the thread of the lesson more difficult. I am fond of personal stories about a skill, preferably in the beginning of a chapter. But not throughout and not trying to convey skills in a storybook fashion. It may work for some but not for me. The book also references competitive orienteering entirely too much. It does stress how some skills benefit you outside of that sport but it's almost anecdotal. The book tries to sell orienteering all too much and the last nearly third of the book is all on orienteering and not in a way that leads to skill development. It stresses what to do when planning to go to an event and what it will be like all the way through how to set up your own events and how they should be planned. As a book on orienteering that would be great but this book doesn’t propose to be that. Now all that said, this book does have a lot of good information. Most of it is presented in easy to learn segments. There are a ton of exercises (that I am not up to doing) that will improve your skills and understanding. Many of these could be great to those who education others in navigation skills. The original author was obviously very passionate, skilled, and knowledgeable. The lessons are, though long winded, written in a way that anyone should be able to pick up on them with ease. For anyone not intimately familiar with map and compass, you will probably pick up some tips and tricks and at the end be able to navigate at a reasonable level. Time is given to the skills of map reading and compass reading separately and their uses singularly. That would be about the first third of the book. The second third is given to uses together. Some small time is spent on some more primitive techniques. The remainder is only useful to those want to orienteer as a sport. But give it a shot if its a skill you want to work on. I do recommend this book but only concern yourself with taking what you need and leaving the rest.

This is an upgraded edition of the he book I used years ago to learn how to use an orienteering compass. If you are diligent to read it and practice the exercises, it will absolutely teach you to find your way using a topographical map. I have been lost twice and found my way out of the woods using what I learned in this book. I highly recommend it.

Hi, This book is supposed to have a training map attached to the back cover.Sadly it is missing. Could you please check this out.It is a book I want but without the map it is incomplete. Yours faithfully K.Glennane.

Recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn about map orientation. Excellent.

Calidad

I do not have the first and second edition, but I have the impression that the third edition contains a lot of redundant information. Informat that was added to justify a 3rd edition. And why did you make that major error: the table of contents mentions a training map that is missing. That map is used in several exercises!! Sloppy, if you ask me.

Bought this book on line, as i am starting to hike in our forest areas, thought this might put some structure into the correct procedures for map and compass use. Found this book very informative and a good learning platform, one problem with buying on line was the fact that a lot of the training exercises in the book needed the training map in the back of the book, you do not have this with on line downloads.. Would recomend this book to readers looking to improve the skills needed for safe passage when going off track.