Celestial Navigation: A Complete Home Study Course, Second Edition

This is a fantastic book, but be prepared for some deep study - and that's my kind of study! This is definitely a classroom-style textbook, and I can imagine being tutored along through the topics with an instructor along with fellow students. When you read thru each chapter and complete any of the study tests you may find therein, don't simply chalk the lesson up and move on to the next. Every chapter is a treasure trove of concepts, terminology, and procedures that you'll use in the future should you rely on the never-failing celestial version of GPS. Along with a basic overview in the choice and use of a sextant, Burch provides numerous work sheets for use after taking your sextant sights. He includes excerpts from Bowditch and several annual Nautical Almanac charts, which for the most part allows you to peer into the morass of trigonometry required for measuring and plotting the spherical triangles of celesital navigation. It's a fascinating subject, one which merits deep study with this textbook. I HIGHLY recommend this book with a reminder: This is not a simple, easy read. You'll find yourself thumbing back and forth through the pages, studying hard, testing yourself, copying and filling out forms, and leaving sticky notes that hang outside the pages for future reference. But when you're finished with it, you'll sure know celestial navigation.

OMG this is more than I expected. It is truly a celestial navigation home course that teaches you as if you were sitting there in the class. Starts out with the basics and progresses in a very concise and understandable manner. Because there is no student-instructor interaction (to clarify problems or explain material) I thought this might be overwhelming. The examples given and the explanations that follow allow you to review, re-do, re-do, and re-do the problems until you have a complete and thorough understanding of the processes. StarPath (of Seattle) is the school that uses this text and I actually contacted them when I had a question. They gave me a free 1-month WebCard pass to their public discussion board on-line and I was able to ask the instructor to explain something - and he did in a very quick manner. I would say that this book works well for me because I spent a lot of time looking at celestial navigation tutorials on-line and Googled everything - so I at least had a basis of understanding before starting. I'm not sure how easy it would be to start with this book (or any book) absolutely cold on the subject. If you are interested in this subject I suggest you buy "The Barefoot Navigator" by Jack Lagan first, watch the tutorials on celestial navigation at THE PRACTICAL NAVIGATOR ( [...] ), and then buy this book and your equipment needed.

By “prescriptive method” I mean that they show you a work form and tell you how to fill in the numbers without telling you what you are filling in or why. Some people prefer to learn this way. Personally I do not learn well from that sort of instruction. I have to understand what it is I am doing even if it is only in layman’s terms. However in Chapter 10 they do offer an overview. To be fair I must point out that this book is primarily intended to be a reference text for an instructor-led course, and perhaps with an instructor to answer questions it would work better. For home study you should start with Chapter 10. Chapter 10 is a good introduction to the basic concepts of celestial navigation. Then returning to the first nine chapters, where they provide the various forms and tell you where to find the numbers to put into those forms, you might not be quite so utterly lost. It is the nature of celestial navigation that there are a great many look-up tables that one must learn to use. I don’t see enough guidance in this book for beginners on how to interpret those tables. I am no stranger to look-up tables, but darned if I didn’t find many in both The Nautical Almanac and various Sight Reduction Tables to be initially confounding. Sure…once you see how they are laid out they are as dirt-simple to use as any look-up tables, but on first blush you can easily get confused. On the plus side Burch is quick to acknowledge many other beginners’ blunders and to point them out along the way. For an example: he is careful to explicitly teach how to add and subtract clock times and angles which at first can seem tricky when you have to carry over whole hours into the minutes or whole degrees into arc-minutes. Furthermore in various places throughout the book he will put in a notation along the lines of : “If you got the wrong answer go back and check this step for thus-and-such error.” A sign of a very experienced teacher, and a great comfort and help to those who are destined to make those blunders. (Myself included!) He also provides a great many practice problems with worked-out answers which are a huge help to any student taking any course in the subject. Even if you learn your celestial from some other source these worked examples would still be a good reason to purchase this book. Once you have got the concepts down (by use of this text or some other course) then moving along to Chapter 11 will reward you with a great wealth of advanced insight and interesting tips. I enjoyed Chapter 11 a great deal, but I already knew how to do celestial navigation when I read it. Regarding the Kindle edition: This book and course relies heavily on work forms. The work forms are actually very well laid out once you understand what it is you are looking for. Although I personally disdain reliance on work forms in preference for fully understanding what you are doing they would certainly be helpful in stressful or fatigued situations. Unfortunately it isn’t easy to flip back and forth in the Kindle book to the various forms, nor is it easy to flip back and forth to the snippets of the various tables from the Nautical Almanac and sight reduction methods. If you already understand that stuff the Kindle version is perfectly OK. You can enlarge any of the illustrations or tables and they are quite intelligible. On the other hand if you are hoping to execute the course with this book alone you would do better to acquire it in hard-copy format. The forms are also available at Starpath-dot-com and you really should buy yourself a hard-copy Nautical Almanac in any case – so you could tackle this particular shortcoming by downloading and printing out the forms and acquiring an almanac before you start. IMHO there isn’t a single course in celestial navigation that would not be greatly enhanced by having a hard copy Nautical Almanac on hand to thumb through even if it is a couple of years out of date. I highly recommend that any student of celestial navigation acquire this book, but I sincerely doubt that one can learn celestial navigation with this one book alone without an instructor to guide you. If an instructor is not available you will probably want to get a hold of a few additional books on the subject to supplement this one. However to be perfectly clear, I do not know of any other single book that will adequately teach you the subject on your own either. Chances are good that if you are attempting to learn this stuff on your own you will end up with at least a few books on the subject. The excellent features enumerated above far outweigh the few slight criticisms I have made so I rate this book five stars. It certainly deserves to be counted among the very best available on the subject.

I like these items (toy) too . . . But without a boat, a navy and their tools or in the top 5%. Does not look save to go out by myself to enjoy life’s fun toy-tools. Or its peace of pie. Equally speaking. Good read and trainer, am sure it is, a game to coarse sailing out, as a sailors would wanta-bee do.

Absolutely the best book, clear, complete, I had on the topic. I am Italian, of course I know English, but I can say it’s easier to study on this book compared to my native language ones. Highly recommended for those interested in Celestial Navigation (and in culture). Really outstanding.

A very practical guide to celestial navigation with lots of worked examples and practice questions with answers.

David Burch ist mir schon lange ein Begriff durch sein wunderbares Buch KAYAK NAVIGATION. Bin jetzt mitten drin in CELESTIAL NAVIGATION. Klare Sprache, gute Erklärungen. In vielen kleinen Schritten, angereichert mit Kontrollübungen und Wiederholungen, fasst man entspannt Fuß in der von vielen gefürchteten und gemiedenen Materie.

I have tried a few cel nav books, this one starts at the very basics of adding degrees and minutes .... sounds easy but can catch you out. So far so good I’m about 1/3 rd of the way through it. I’m still enjoying reading it. You also get to know their web site and down load well worth the money it’s self.

El mejor libro para iniciarse o repasar el uso del sextante, muy detallado y con ejemplos para estrellas, planetas, sol... Calidad de impresión bastante mejorable.