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 enlarge | Author: Bjoern Kjellstroem
Brand: Silva
Category: Book
List Price: $18.95
Buy Used: $5.71
You Save: $13.24 (70%)
New (36) Used (34) Collectible (1) from $5.71
Avg. Customer Rating:  20 reviews
Sales Rank: 22287
Media: Paperback
Edition: Revised
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 242
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.6
MPN: 2805005
ISBN: 0020292651
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.51
UPC: 785555033276
EAN: 9780020292654
ASIN: 0020292651
Publication Date: June 24, 1994
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
Good Read March 24, 2006
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is a must read for teens or adults wishing to learn how to read and use maps and compass. From hiking in the nations parks to your local wooded areas, learning what is in this book will make sure you are NEVER lost!
A good primer October 15, 2005
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
If you want to get the basics in an easy to read format, this is for you.
 Too outdated July 29, 2005
19 out of 29 found this review helpful
Don't waste your time or money. This was an okay book in its day (though it has zero content about altimeters) but that day is long past. The new edition of the Land Navigation Handbook covers the basics equally well and also educates on altimeters, digital mapping, and GPS.
 Thoughts from a beginner May 9, 2005
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
I signed up to compete in an all day adventure race with orienteering being the main focus. I had never done orienteering before in my life and had no idea what was involved. Upon advice from other racers I purchased BEWMAC (as those in the "know" call it) and I read this book to my team-mate over the course of a 5 hour drive from Pittsburgh to Detroit.
Literally this was my first exposure to orienteering. We were able to successfully navigate through an all day orienteering adventure race using this book. I thought it was easy to understand, came with a sample book and all of the skills were reinforced with simple quizzes at the end of each chapter. I have no doubt that there are more in debt studies, but from a beginners standpoint you can't go wrong. Just get it already.
 Vastly Overrated and Outdated December 4, 2004
59 out of 63 found this review helpful
This was the first book I ever bought on the subject of using a map and compass. It was recommended by everyone I knew, as there wasn't a whole lot else out there at the time, and it had been in print since 1955. Today, about the best I can say for Kjellstrom's book is that it is better for beginners than the rambling "Sierra Club Land Navigation Handbook" (revised edition or not), but that's about it. The illustrations in "Be Expert With Map and Compass" are few and small, and the book has an ancient feel to it, with outdated references and quirky language (it's been in print for nearly 50 years, and the author died over 10 years ago when in his nineties). A smaller criticism is the tiny format and paperback-size pages - difficult to lay flat and read while attempting to orient the map or set the compass (you'll have to practice this stuff in the field, remember).
The age of Kjellstrom's book is revealed in the obsolete recommendations on adjusting the compass for declination, where the hoary old methods of memorizing rhymes or worse, of drawing magnetic declination lines all over your map with a pencil (usually inaccurately) and obscuring important detail is advocated. The latter method, still practiced by orienteering or adventure racing competitors (who get nicely pre-marked magnetic-oriented maps or draw their lines at home on a draftsman's board with a protractor), it's not easily accomplished without error using only a ruler. And if you have to improvise in the field, imagine doing it in the wind on some rock with only a compass baseplate for a straightedge! Modern books recognize better methods: either buy a compass with adjustable declination, or else tape a separate pointer for local east or west true declination for your area onto your compass baseplate. Simple, easy, and virtually error-proof.
A more serious problem is that fully half the book doesn't even deal with real-life wilderness navigation, but is instead devoted to the unrelated sport of orienteering and the setting up of orienteering races (a fine sport, but with little relevance to practical backcountry navigation with its use of special large-scale maps and simplified compasses used only to orient the map to north). Learning how to set up control points and course lines for orienteering races ISN'T going to teach you how to navigate in remote backcountry! Worse, this emphasis on orienteering means that the book completely omits important material: advanced map/compass navigational techniques, sun/star navigational methods, position-finding, latitude/longitude and UTM grid systems, navigating in certain specialized environments and climates, etc, etc. - information a wilderness navigator ought to know.
To conclude, the book is simply outdated, inadequate, and slow-reading in comparison to modern map/compass guides (my first recommendation: 'The Essential Wilderness Navigator') that will teach you much more, and more quickly.
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