Navigating may be a challenging task on a sunny day, but what happens when mariners must guide their boat through the darkest night or the thickest fog? Either way, radar is a must-have tool for safe navigation but a complex task if you don’t know how to use it.
An educational book entitled ‘Radar for Mariners’ comes to serve every mariner operating either powerboats or sailboats on the proper use of radar, the most valuable electronic navigation tool showing not only where you are, but who else or what else is out there with you.
Written by David Burch, the director of the Starpath School of Navigation in Seattle and author of nine books on marine navigation, the book moves beyond just introducing readers to radar’s functions, but it also combines an exceptionally easy-to-understand wording which makes it a great reference material.
Split into basic and advanced sections, the book enables mariners to choose the best radar model for their boat, install the system, and operate it, interpreting the images on their radar screen, as well as tracking the movements of vessels around them. The book hardly limits in presenting how radar works, but it also explains the system’s limitations, strongly competing a real classroom course.
As such, ‘Radar for Mariners’ serves as a useful educational tool used by professional and recreational radar training schools around the globe, while it has also been adopted by the American Sailing Association for their radar course.
The book goes beyond advising on every aspect of the latest technological developments surrounding navigational tools, but it actually takes the reader to all the foundations to know how radars work, clearing things up in all levels.
Acting as a fit-for-purpose, comprehensive manual on the efficient use of marine radar, the book is simply a must-read for anyone operating such system and certainly addressed both to the average boater and the mariners who want to turn into experts on small-craft radar operations.
Author’s quote
“It is pea soup fog. A radar target is headed straight toward me. What do I do? If it were clear weather at night, what lights would I look for? Our goal is to help mariners answer these questions and others like them underway. We also cover piloting and chart navigation using radar to show the key role of radar amongst all our navigation instruments. The book also supports our realistic PC based radar simulator, the Starpath Radar Trainer.”
-David Burch.
