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Ultimate Navigation Manual Reviewed Can Lyle Brother's navigational reference book live up to its title?
Posted: 26 October 2011 by Jon
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If you're going to call your book the Ultimate Navigation Manual it had better be good. And comprehensive. And accessible too – there's not much point in a reference book that's pretty much unreadable, though oddly a lot them appear to take precisely the opposite approach... The good news is that Lyle Brotherton's navigation bible, strikes a great balance between accessibility and authoritative information. Lyle is an expert in search and rescue technques and has instructed search and rescue teams in no fewer than 24 countries in them. It sounds like a cliché, but he's genuinely passionate about navigation and mountain safety.
Ultimate Navigation Manual - 360 pages of comprehensive, usable, navigation knowledge.
To put that in perspective, last night I was off on a mountain bike night ride, while Lyle was setting out on a night navigation trip with a mate for fun. Which is great, but what really matters, of course, is just how much of that knowledge and enthusiasm makes it into book form. The answer, we reckon, is an awful lot. Around 360 pages of large-ish format paperback's worth in fact. Four Main Sections It's designed to be worked through sequentially in successive weekends, starting with The Essentials section which covers the basics you need to know for safe navigation; maps and grid systems for example, landscape features and how they look when described by contours, the compass and how to take bearings and so on.
The author himself where he's happiest - he's taught techniques to search and rescue teams in 24 different countries.
It's all good, detailed stuff with lots of colour photos and diagrams. But mixed in with the conventional basics are sections on environmental navigation – wind direction, smells, vegetation and so on – and celestial navigation both in daylight and at night.
It's good stuff and even if you've been navigating around happily for years, chances are that you'll pick up or relearn something along the way. Maybe just something you've never considered doing like sniffing the wind for the scent of traffic fumes or farmyard smells. Not Rocket Science Section two covers Techniques and is simply excellent. Most of it isn't rocket science, just the application of logical, reasoned thinking to help you find your way across the hills. There's plenty of stuff you'll almost certainly be familiar with, using handrails in poor visibility for example and memorising big features that will either confirm that you're on the right track or have drifted off it. But equally there's plenty of stuff here you may never have considered. 'Thumbing' the map for example, where you hold you thumb by your location and move it as you go so you effectively have a 'you are here' marker at all times. Or transit lines, where you use features to form an imaginary but useful line across the landscape. Special Environments The third section covers navigating in 'Special Environments' like mountains, deserts, jungles and in bad weather and is absolute mine of specialist information and techniques. There's actually so much information that it could be a bit overwhelming, but to Lyle's credit, the modern lay-out, use of bullet-points, tables and some great photography mean that it's never an all-engulfing wall of text and it's easy to go through individual sections and take out the important points. Additional 'Expert Tip' and 'Golden Rules' boxes help here too by highlighting the really important stuff. Oh, and if you're after a GPS or some tips on using one, Lyle has you covered there too. Overall, the Collin Ultimate Navigation Manual is the best and most comprehensive navigation guide we've come across. Regardless of how much you think you know already, we can pretty much guarantee that you'll learn new techniques that'll help you look at things slightly differently. And the great thing about them, is that you'll use what you learn whenever you're out in the hills. Ideally you should use the book as a four weekend course – the assumption is that you know pretty much nothing to start off with – tackling a section each time, but equally, though we suspect Lyle would frown on this, you can dip into the pages and pick out useful sections where you feel your own knowledge is lacking. And if that all sounds like a lot of hard work, look at it this way: being able to navigate in the hills not only keeps you safe, it's your passport to being independent in the outdoors and setting yourself free. And navigation isn't some magical black art, it's a logical, methodical process that anyone can learn and enjoy. The Ultimate Navigation Manual by Lyle Brotherton is published by Collins and retails for £14.95. Lyle contributes regular navigation tips to OM – see the Hill Skills section of the site – and has his own web site at www.micronavigation.com where you can also find extracts from the book.