GPS Advice and Settings -- revised
NickBull
writing it, I've found that some of the settings were suboptimal, so
the text needed revision. And since several people emailed recently
with lots of questions about which GPS and software to buy, I've added
a brief section on that. And for the purists/Luddites who think GPS's
have no place in randonneuring, well, I have some sympathy with your
views, I just got tired of getting lost and adding bonus miles :-)
This is also posted at The Daily Randonneur along with photos of Ed
Felker's new Vista HCx (http://thedailyrandonneur.wordpress.com/
2008/05/11/going-gps-tikit-update-and-long-haul-trucker/)
Have a great ride, everyone!
Nick
Some GPS Advice and Settings for randonneurs:
The settings below are based on 10,000+ miles of riding brevets with a
Garmin GPS. They work pretty well, nearly all the time. But they
still occasionally come up with novel approaches to brevet riding,
particularly if you were in a hurry when you put the route into the
mapping software, MapSource. Thus, the single most important thing to
know about using your GPS is:
YOU STILL NEED TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE CUE SHEET.
Follow along the cue sheet as you ride. When the GPS tells you to
turn, check the cue sheet to make sure it told you to turn, too. Then
you'll avoid wrong turns, and you'll have some idea where you are on
the cue sheet if the batteries die.
These are the GPS Settings that I've settled on after more than 10,000
miles of riding with a Garmin eTrex Vista Cx GPS, including BMB and
PBP. These settings seem to work well in places where I've ridden my
bike in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania,
Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Quebec, France, and
England. Maybe other places have road-building quirks that would make
these settings suboptimal.
For me, almost the whole point of buying a GPS is to use it in
"AutoRoute" or "Follow Road" mode and have it tell me where to turn to
stay on the route specified by the cue sheet. Having it in "Direct"
or "Off Road" mode is little better than just riding with the cue
sheet and no GPS, since there is nothing to tell you that you missed a
turn. On twisty roads, the straight line that it paints between where
you are and the next viapoint is unlikely to be in the same direction
you're riding. It could even be pointing almost the opposite way.
What kind of GPS and software to buy?
By the time you read this, it may be out of date, so take it with a
grain of salt. Garmin is currently the dominant GPS manufacturer for
non-automobile use. While others are finally starting to make GPS's
that might be suitable for randonneuring, you will have a little more
difficulty in getting up to speed on them because of the lack of other
experienced randonneur users.
For randonneuring, you need a GPS that has as small a form-factor and
weight as possible, is easy to see, that can Autoroute, and that can
easily be kept running for multiple days. Right now, the eTrex Vista
HCx seems like the best bet for doing all that. The Vista screen is
supposedly optimized for reading in bright sunlight -- I find it
easier to read than the 60's or 76's screen. Plus the form factor and
weight are smaller and the battery life is longer than the 60's or
76's. You can easily change the batteries on the Vista while
continuing to ride. The HCx has the latest antenna technology, which
makes it work better in cities and forests and under overhangs. It
has a built-in altimiter that supposedly makes it more accurate than
just triangulating off satellites for altitude. It has a built-in
compass, which seems like it could be handy if you ever lose satellite
lock, e.g. when hiking.
By contrast, if you buy one of Garmin's cycling-specific GPS's (305 to
705), they come with a built-in battery that makes riding for multiple
days problematic and most of these don't seem to know how to
autoroute.
To "Autoroute," you need software on the PC that matches up with your
GPS, so that implies (most easily) Garmin software. MapSource is the
overall program, and inside it you need mapping software. The current
version of the US mapping software is City Navigator North America NT
version 9. If you want to be able to look at route profiles, the only
way I've found to do this is to buy the Garmin Topo USA software. You
make the route in City Navigator and then switch to the topo maps and
look at the profile. You don't otherwise need topo maps for
randonneuring purposes. So: Not strictly necessary, but nice.
Setting to use in MapSource:
The philosophy behind the settings below is to tell MapSource you're
on a really fast bicycle and are indifferent between riding highways
or byways. Then you set enough viapoints into the actual route that
it forces MapSource to autoroute you where you actually want to go.
Edit->Preferences->Routing
Use Auto-Routing
Vehicle Type: Bicycle
Try to Avoid: Toll Roads, Carpool Lanes
Calculation Style: Faster Time
Road Selection: Halfway between Prefer Minor Roads and Prefer Highways
Driving Speeds: Default
Some things that are not entirely obvious in making a route in
MapSource
I make waypoints for the crucial locations (start/end, controls,
springs, big climbs, summits). These can be made on the fly while
you're making the route, you don't have to make a bunch of waypoints
first and then add them to the route.
So make a waypoint for the start/end control. I make the symbol on
controls a bicycle. Right click on the waypoint and select "Begin
Route". Now follow the cue sheet and click at the turns. After each
click, you'll need to scroll the screen around to make sure that
MapSource didn't find a "better" way to get to the turn than the cue
sheet's way. If it did, click Ctrl-Z to undo the point and then click
on the road just after MapSource's wrong turn. This should force
MapSource not to take the wrong turn. Now click where the cue sheet
says to turn and check that MapSource did it right, this time. If
not, undo the point and go stick a point after MapSource's next wrong
turn. Keep doing this until MapSource correctly autoroutes the
segment. Repeat for the next cue .... If you find out later that a
route is taking the wrong way, select the routing tool, right-click on
the route, and click on "Insert New Section". Pull the pointer to
where you want to insist that the route goes and click there. Check
that the route now goes where you want.
If you want to add a WayPoint (like the next control), just click on
the WayPoint tool button and click where you want the waypoint to be.
Give the WayPoint its name, maybe pick a symbol, decide if you want it
to be a "Proximity Waypoint" (if you're not sure exactly where it is,
then setting it as a Proximity Waypoint let's you put a circle around
the waypoint and the GPS will alert you as you enter and exit the
circle -- but Garmin only thinks you could ever possibly need a
ridiculously small number of proximity waypoints, maybe 15). Click on
OK. Click on the Route Tool button. Now right-click on the Waypoint
and select "Add to Route". Keep on truckin'
I usually start a new route at each control, unless there is a segment
with very few turns between controls. As I'm coming in to the
control, I'll tell the GPS to start navigating the next route so it's
ready to go by the time I'm done with the control. I give the routes
sequential names like "1Start to CtrlAirmont" "2CtrlAirmont to
CtrlShepSweet", etc. The GPS won't show you the whole name, but
enough to figure out which one you need.
A problem occurs when the cue sheet wants to take you off road (e.g.
onto bike path, or a bit of sidewalk between cul de sacs, etc.).
You'll have to end your route at this point and start a new route. If
you don't, then the GPS will try to route you up to the start of the
bike path, and then route you on whatever roads are necessary to get
you to the end of the bike path, thereby adding plenty of bonus
miles. You may want to set a proximity waypoint at the start of the
route that is departing the bike path so that the GPS will beep at you
and display a message to help ensure that you notice that point
instead of crusing on another mile down the bike path. On a really
long bike path section, it could be worth making a "Direct Route"
sequence of points (if you know where the bike path actually goes --
it won't likely be on the map), and then switch the GPS into "Off
Road" to navigate that section.
If you set more than 50 points into a route, then the GPS will _not_
be able to calculate the route in autoroute mode. So as soon as you
see you're getting close to 50 points in a route, stop by pressing the
Esc key and start a new route. I usually try to stop at 45 so that I
can add more waypoints later if I need to add information or correct
an auto-routing error that I didn't notice as I made the route.
I like to know where the "big" climbs are and how long they'll go on.
Once you've got your routes set up, you can use Garmin's USTopo to
look at the profile of the route, and then set waypoints that tell you
how long and how high you're going to climb, and where the summit is.
Solving two little MapSource problems:
Sometimes you want to select a waypoint, but no matter what you do,
MapSource gives you options to do with selecting the route. Go to the
Waypoint tab, click on the waypoint and click on "Show on Map". Go up
to the "Select Map Scale" and set it to 80 feet. You'll be able to
select your waypoint.
Sometimes you want to select a route (for example,to extend it) but
you're finding it difficult to do so. Again, set the scale to 80
feet, and right-click on the route close to its end, but not at the
end. You can usually get a menu that will have an "Extend Route"
selection.
Downloading to the GPS:
You'll need to select the maps around your route (highlight all the
routes and right click to get the menu option for Select Maps around
Route). For that matter, check for any points where the route goes
close to the edge of a map. Select the Map tool button and click on
the map that hasn't been selected. I've occasionally had routes that
MapSource thought stayed in a given map, but then the route went off
the map into never-never land.
Don't forget to download everything to your GPS. After the ride,
upload from GPS and save it with an appropriate name.
And if you make any changes to anything in MapSource, you have to
download everything again. You can't just download a new map, because
it seems to wipe out what is there.
For that matter, having made sure that there is nothing in the GPS
that you care about (if not, upload it first), and before you download
from MapSource, go to the "Trip Computer" page on the GPS, click the
button that gives you the sub-menu, click on Reset, then Select All,
and reset the whole GPS. That way you know there's nothing in it left
over to confuse you from a prior ride, and you also know that the only
stuff that will be in it is whatever you are currently downloading.
So make sure to download everything you need.
Settings in the GPS:
As mentioned above, I have an eTrex Vista CX. It has built-in
altimiter and compass (I thought this might be useful for hiking, when
I might lose satellites more often). You can add memory, so I put in
a 1/2 gigabyte. I think the software settings are pretty similar
between the Garmin models that do autorouting.
The most crucial settings are the Routing settings. So click the
Setup icon then the Routing icon.
Guidance Method: Follow Road
Follow Road Method: Faster Time (just like in MapSource)
Next Turn Pop-Up: On (that's the whole point of this whole exercise)
Now select the little button at the bottom of the screen labeled
"Follow Road Options"
Off Route Recalculation: Prompted (otherwise, when you miss a turn, it
just recalculates without saying anything, and it'll get you back on
route, but you've just violated the rule about "if you go off-route,
then you must return at the point where you went off-route" --
further, you might miss a secret control, then ride the remaining 500k
of your 600k, through hellish heat, torrential downpours, biblical
insect plagues, etc. only to find out you DNQ'd back at the 100K
secret control.)
Calculation method: Best Route (I don't know how much difference this
makes).
Calculate Routes for: Bicycle (if you set it for car while doing some
errands in town, then you'll get some really weird routing on your
next brevet. Then even when you eventually figure out that the GPS
has become flaky on this brevet because you forget ot reset it back to
bicycle, and you do so, you still get weird routing. That's because
with some of the settings, you have to switch the GPS off and back on
for it to modify its behavior.)
Avoid: Toll Roads Unpaved Roads (unless the brevet is using them)
Carpool Lanes
OK, that's it for Routing settings. Other settings don't seem to
matter as much.
In "System Setup" I'll set it for "Battery Saver" but then the next
time I go to use the GPS it seems to come up in "Normal" So I only
occasionally bother to change it back to "Battery Saver" and even
then, the batteries still seem to run out way faster than Garmin says
they should. I have WAAS set to disabled to help the batteries last
longer. I usually just use the Alkaline batteries that you can get
nearly anywhere. On short, local rides I'll use rechargeables, but
they don't seem to last quite as long.
On "Page Sequence", I only have "Trip Computer", "Map" and "Active
Route". This makes it easy to flip to the page I want. The only
other thing I look at is the altimiter, but that's just on
interminable climbs when I want to know how close I've gotten to the
top.
I have the altimiter set to "Auto Calibration" and Barometer Mode set
to "Variable Elevation."
Next, for some reason Garmin has setting that you don't set in the
Settings icon. Specifically, go back to the Main Menu screen and
click the Tracks icon and then click Setup. I set "Wrap when Full"
on. For Record Method, I use "Auto" and set the Interval to "Most
Often". I set it this way because it creates tracks that seem to have
"enough" points to accurately characterize the ride without having so
many points that when you upload to MotionBased, it refuses to upload
because it says there are too many track points (though you can filter
a track in MapSource to reduce the number of points).
Make sure that in the "Data Card Setup" button at the bottom of the
screen you set "Log Track to Data Card" to "on".
Using the GPS:
If you used the GPS in the car on "Car" setting, you'll need to set it
to "Bicycle" in the routing setup, and then you must switch off and
on. If you forget to do this, you'll sometimes find the GPS routing
you strangely off route.
If you had the GPS on while driving to the start of the brevet, or you
went for a little toodle round the parking lot before the brevet, then
you may want to go to the "Trip Computer" screen, bring up the sub-
menu, and click Reset. DO NOT click "Select All" because this will
delete everything and turn your GPS into something that will only
track your ride--probably not worth carrying. The stuff it has
selected by default is the stuff you want to be Resetting. Click
"Apply"
Next, go to the Main Menu, toggle down to the Routes icon, select it,
then toggle to the first route that you want and select it, then click
on Navigate. It'll display the "Calculating" icon and eventually beep
at you to tell you it's ready.
While I'm riding, I usually have the Map page displayed so I can see
what's coming up. Sometimes the GPS will pop up a "turn coming"
screen and it's hard to tell exactly where to turn. This'll get
better with experience -- but even today, I made a turn a half a block
too early. It displays the "turn coming" screen for too long after
you've made the turn (why can't it tell, it's got a built-in compass,
so it knows I've turned) and if you're doing a "QR" "QL" sequence then
it doesn't get the QL part up fast enough for you to get over in
time. Oh, well, it'll display "Off Route. Recalculate?" and you say
"No" and do a U-turn and get back on route.
When you get to the end of a route, you'd think that the GPS would
flash its screen, beep at you, maybe fire off some firecrackers to
tell you "We're Here!!!!" No, it just stops routing and assumes
you're smart enough to recognize at 3 am that you've arrived at an
unlit control in the middle of nowhere. You could set a proximity
waypoint, but there are a limited number available.
Another little gotcha -- you're riding at 45 miles an hour down a
hill, trying to keep an eye on the road as well as on the @!#%'ing
motorist who thinks that a foot of clearance is plenty. About half a
mile later, you notice that the map page isn't showing the purple line
that shows you're on route, and the distance to the next turn is
rising. Hey, you missed the indicator that a turn was coming, and you
missed the indicator that said you were off route, do you want to
recalculate. You turn around and suddenly the GPS shows a different
distance to the next turn. Whatever! You need to ride back to the
turn you missed, and all will probably be groovy. Or you may need to
recaculate the route.
Sometimes the GPS gets so confused that the only way to restore its
intelligence is to tell it to stop navigating and then switch it off
and on.
Peter Leiss
This is really good advice. I have mostly solved the battery life
issue with the 305/705 however I am still working on the auto routing.
The 305 will not do it at all however the 705 will or Garmin says it
will. Still working on that one.
Peter
On 12-May-08, at 5:36 PM, NickBull wrote:
>
> I've posted this before, including earlier this year. But since
> writing it, I've found that some of the settings were suboptimal, so
> the text needed revision. And since several people emailed recently
> with lots of questions about which GPS and software to buy, I've added
> a brief section on that. And for the purists/Luddites who think GPS's
> have no place in randonneuring, well, I have some sympathy with your
> views, I just got tired of getting lost and adding bonus miles :-)
>
> Have a great ride, everyone!
>
> Nick
>
>
> Some GPS Advice and Settings for randonneurs:
>
> The settings below are based on 10000+ miles of riding brevets with a
> Garmin GPS. They work pretty well, nearly all the time. But they
> still occasionally come up with novel approaches to brevet riding,
> particularly if you were in a hurry when you put the route into the
> mapping software, MapSource. Thus, the single most important thing to
> know about using your GPS is:
>
> YOU STILL NEED TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE CUE SHEET.
>
> Follow along the cue sheet as you ride. When the GPS tells you to
> turn, check the cue sheet to make sure it told you to turn, too. Then
> you'll avoid wrong turns, and you'll have some idea where you are on
> the cue sheet if the batteries die.
>
> These are the GPS Settings that I've settled on after more than 10000
> miles of riding with a Garmin eTrex Vista Cx GPS, including BMB and
> PBP. These settings seem to work well in places where I've ridden my
> bike in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania,
> Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Quebec, France, and
> England. Maybe other states have road-building quirks that would make
> Copyright Nicholas Bull, 2007.
> >
>
Harry Spatz
1. Battery life is better if you turn off tracking. Why do you need it?
You already know the route. I have ridden 22 hours on one set of NiMh
rechargeables with my Etrex Vista HCx. These are Powerex 2700 mAh. The
batteries and charger are very important. There are big differences brand
to brand. NiMh batteries last much longer in warm weather and in my
experience these last longer than alkalynes.
2. If you buy a 2-gig card ($16 from Newegg) you do not have to worry about
whether the map is loaded or not because you can load all the maps at once.
Once you do this, you never have to load any maps again unless you buy
updated maps.
3. Just because Mapsource says the route is correct, doesn't mean that the
GPS will route it correctly, even if the GPS matches Mapsource in each
set-up parameter. You must load the route (really the waypoints that
comprise the route), let the GPS navigate the route, then check the route in
the GPS against the queue sheet.
4. I name my waypoints to reflect the queue sheet. For example 22.2BR means
that when the cue is at 22.2 miles from the control most recently left, bear
left. If the mileage is correct and the GPS actually shows the route as a
"bear left" there is no need to consult the cue sheet. If I need to consult
the cue sheet (very seldom), I know exactly where to look.
5. If you think the GPS routing does not make sense, do not press,
"Recalculate!" First make sure that you are actually on the course, then
start navigating another route, then cancel that immediately and start
navigating the route you are on. If you press, "recalculate," Garmin units
seem to forget that there are intermediate waypoints and find the "best"
route to the last waypoint in the route.
6. I put all my routes from the Boston series last year up on the Randon
file section. They should be a good starting point for this year's brevets.
If you find any errors, let me know. Did anyone use my route to ride the
200K last Saturday? If so, I'd like to know how it went. I did not ride
the 200K (family commitments), but plan to ride the rest of the series.
Harry Spatz
sfuller
> This is really good advice. I have mostly solved the battery life
> issue with the 305/705 however I am still working on the auto routing.
> The 305 will not do it at all however the 705 will or Garmin says it
> will. Still working on that one.
a 605 and I'm curious how others are working around the battery
issues. I have some thoughts on how I want to handle it including
external battery packs, and/or a solar panel.
Steve
Jim Bronson
fully recharge the 305, giving it 28-30 hours of total battery time.
For a 1200K I would probably want a couple more of them. Kind of an
inelegant, wasteful solution but it gets the job done.
--
I'm doing the Houston-Austin MS150 in 2008. I'll be riding 175 miles
by bicycle! Please consider supporting me in this worthy cause at my
e-donate link: http://www.ms150.org/edon.cfm?id=220459
Sam Huffman
> I have an external battery pack that is meant for an iPod. It will
> fully recharge the 305, giving it 28-30 hours of total battery time.
> For a 1200K I would probably want a couple more of them. Kind of an
> inelegant, wasteful solution but it gets the job done.
I jerry-rigged an external battery pack for my 305, but never found a
good solution for the USB connector. Even with a rubber-band to hold
it tight it would still shake loose on a rough road.
I'm now trying the eTrex Vista cx. After bad results on our 300K
(Alkaline batteries shook loose after 80 miles), it stayed on for our
414K Fleche a couple weeks ago, which included some dirt and gravel
roads. 2 2700 mAH NiMH batteries kept it powered for ~16 hours of
riding with juice to spare.
Sam
Bob Kassel
sense, recalculate does not always "smarten" it up, but if I stop the
navigation and reload the route I am on, as long as I am on the route,
and not off course, it fixes the problem. If you are off the route
and reload it, it will direct you to the starting point of that route.
I also stopped tracking, getting longer life out of the batteries.
NickBull
about comment #2, because I'm pretty sure that if you go to the Trip
Computer page, click menu, click Reset, and then reset all, then it
wipes out the maps. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I know that when
I've forgotten on occasion to download the maps, they are not "just on
the GPS", even though I know they were previously downloaded to it.
So it seems like somehow the maps have gotten wiped out.
Some other comments, which are not intended to be argumentative, but
rather either to add to what Harry has said or to note trade-offs and
why I've chosen the trade-off that I've chosen. Just like there are
thousands of "perfect randonneur bikes" at PBP, there are many ways
that people might want to optimally use a GPS. For example, some are
happy to just use a GPS to record a track, and that is basically all
that some of Garmin's early bicycle-specific models (305) can do.
Anyway ...
I like having tracking switched on so I can upload to MapSource and
MotionBased and be able to analyze the ride. I use the data to
compare rides, review the current ride (e.g., helping correct my
perceptions, as in "I thought I did a great job at controls, but as it
turns out I spent much more time than I thought"), and help plan for
future rides. So I'd rather just carry a couple of extra batteries or
buy them in a convenience store.
With respect to item 3, in my experience even if you tell the GPS to
simulate riding the route while you are sitting at home, it will still
sometimes navigate differently when you are actually on the road. So
after a couple experiences of this I just quit bothering to simulate
navigation, since it is quite a bit of work.
With respect to item 4, it sounds like you are creating "waypoints" at
turns, rather than just clicking and creating a route using
automatically-created "viapoints", which as far as I can tell cannot
be re-named. The trade-off there is that it is more work to create
the waypoints, but what you're creating is more useful. For me, the
extra work isn't worth it since I'd rather just follow the cue sheet
as I'm riding and know where I am, since I view the GPS as an
auxiliary to the cue sheet, subject to error, malfunction, loss, and
theft.
Finally, with respect to item 5, sometimes I've done all of what
you've described doing and the GPS is still in never-never land. The
one thing that has always worked for me is to stop navigating, switch
the GPS off, wait a bit, switch it back on, and then go to the route
page and navigate the route. If this procedure ever fails, then I'm
really going to be at a loss!
>
> read more »- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
SloMoe
been utilizing a Garmin 76CSx on all my rides for a year now yet still
picked up a few pearls from this thread. I would just like to comment
on a slightly different method of programming in a route. As
mentioned in a previous post, one way to program a route is to insert
a via at a turn, and then the next turn, and then the next, etc. As
also mentioned, while programming, if the GPS determines a "shorter/
better" route to get you to the next turn, it will take you off your
intended route to get you there. You have to be alert to this
possiblity each time you insert a via. I used this method myself
initially. Now, instead of inserting vias AT the turns, I insert them
just AFTER the turns. I find that this method forces the GPS to
program in the intended route more reliably by (usually) removing the
option of the GPS directing you along a "shorter/better" route from
the turn intersection. Still, if there are roads intersecting the
planned route prior to the subsequent turn, the GPS may direct you off
your intended route, but this is so whether you program the route by
inserting vias At the turns or AFTER the turns. If this occurs,
delete the off route segment and insert another via along your route
just after the intersection where the GPS took you off route. There
are two advantages I see for inserting vias AFTER the turns. The
first is that by not inserting vias at intersections, you have
eliminated a common spot from where the GPS may program in a "shorter/
better" routing option. Therefore, you would not have to undo that
segment and correct it, thereby making programming faster. Secondly,
when you insert vias after the turns you still get a "prompt" prior to
the turn while navigating, but in addition as you cycle past the post-
turn via the GPS will confirm that you have reached the via. This
confirms that you are still on route. If you don't see/hear a post-
turn via prompt, you may have turned at an intersection just before
the intended turn, and you can suspect that you are off route.
Of course, either method of programming works. Anyway you chose to
program your routes, it seems clear that accurate route programming is
largely dependent upon the vigilance and experience of the individual
doing the programming.
Harry Spatz
use for the tracks then by all means use them. I did not know if you (or
others) realized that using them eats batteries. That's all.
NickBull said:
. . .I 'm pretty sure that if you go to the Trip
Computer page, click menu, click Reset, and then reset all, then it
wipes out the maps. . Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I know that when
I've forgotten on occasion to download the maps, they are not "just on
the GPS", even though I know they were previously downloaded to it.
So it seems like somehow the maps have gotten wiped out.
I do not believe that there is any way to lose map data from the Trip
Computer Page or any other page on the GPS, although there is a way to
"hide" the maps using the Setup map-->Map Setup - information, but I doubt
that you did that. Your problem stems from thinking that once a map section
is on the GPS, it will stay until you delete it. When you select a bunch of
map sections in MapSource, your computer makes an image and when that image
is sent to the card, it overwrites any image that exists on the card. So
you must reselect any map areas that are already on your card that you wish
to again be written to your card.
I am convinced that a 2 gig card will end your map problems, at least if you
stay in North America-and compared to the other things randonneurs spend
money on, it's pretty short money. This one is under $16 including
shipping:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208244
This will hold your entire set of North America maps and other data, so you
will never have to worry about loading maps or losing map segments again
until you buy updated maps.
Harry Spatz
Tom Marchand
sheet. What's the point of using GPS?
On May 12, 2008, at 11:05 PM, Harry Spatz wrote:
>
> Very good discussion! I've got a few things to add:
>
>
Jim Logan
sheet. What's the point of using GPS?<<
- you familiarize yourself with the route when programming the route.
- it's like riding with a little buddy that isn't as smart as you, but is
persistent at trying navigation. It feels good to be the smarter member of
the team.
- Perhaps once per brevet, the GPS does beep when I am just not paying
attention, and saves me from getting lost.
- It's comforting to know you can find your destination, no matter how lost
you get. Or more importantly, your car.
- While navigating, the GPS tells you what road you are on. This helps
reduce a lot of uncertainly in ambiguous situations, and helps when your
mind is in a fog and you don't remember exactly on the route you are.
- Having a real time map, though small, is a lot handier than a paper map.
Jim Logan
Pittsburgh
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SloMoe
Since the GPS will alert you when a turn is eminent, you won't need to
look at a cycle computer to compare distance traveled to distance to
the next turn as frequently, and you won't need to consult your cue
sheet for the next cue as frequently. This equates to more time spent
looking at the road in front of you and less time looking down at your
handle bars...allowing for, IMHO, a safer ride.
Harry Spatz
reason to consult a queue sheet. For example, if the waypoint shows 22.2BR
and the mileage is close to 22.2 and the route on the GPS shows a "bear
right" there is no way it can be wrong. No queue sheet is needed. I have
ridden 400 km of brevets this year; (2) 200Ks in the Berkshire series and
here is the number of times I consulted a queue sheet and why:
1. People behind me yelled that I took a wrong turn. This happened in the
first 200K. I was on course. They made the mistake.
2. I came to a turn that I coded for a left, but the GPS route showed a
right at a "T". I reset the route in the GPS and then the GPS agreed on the
left, so I verified the left on the queue sheet. This was on the 2nd 200K.
I don't know why the GPS wanted initially for me to turn right, but the way
I named the waypoints, I knew it was wrong.
3. On the 2nd 200K I came to a point where the GPS wanted me to turn left
off the main road, but there was no waypoint telling me to do this. The
problem here was that the small road to the left retained the name of the
main road and the main road assumed a new name. This was not mentioned on
the cue sheet. I believe that the cue sheet assumed we would stay on the
main road despite the name change, so that is what I did. Had I made the
left turn I would have added about 0.5 miles, but would have been joined
back again. I don't think that the queue sheet writer realized that the
road changed names and that the named road continued to the left.
So there were two disputes with the cue sheet in 400 km. of riding and
neither resulted in riding any distance at all in the wrong direction. In
fact the first 200K was error free! If I did happen to miss a turn, it will
beep and tell me that I am off course and if I miss that I will notice that
the distance to the next waypoint is increasing, not decreasing. A queue
sheet doesn't give any feedback, hence the horror stories of people going
miles wrong before they catch their error. This can't happen with a GPS.
Also, at 56 years my eyes see well in the dark, but are affected by turning
on a light to read a queue sheet. I hate navigating at night via queue
sheet. The GPS eliminates that problem. I admit that it takes me 4 hours
to code a 200K and that's a long time, but once it's done I can keep using
it making minor changes that are needed year to year. It takes 3 times as
long to code a 600K, but if some people volunteer to code between some of
the controls, then it is pretty manageable, and again can be used year to
year.
Harry Spatz
-----Original Message-----
From: ran...@googlegroups.com [mailto:ran...@googlegroups.com]On Behalf Of
Tom Marchand
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 9:17 PM
To: randon
Greg
a quick glance at the cure sheet is unnecessary.
Suppose the brevet has you riding on a bike path. Very shortly after
entering the bike path the GPS will 'think' you're lost because you're
no longer on a street. Or, suppose you turn off the street to go to a
bike shop in some mini mall. In either case, the GPS will read this as
a deviation from the course, when it really isn't. If you have your
GPS set up to auto recalculate, then that's just what will happen. The
GPS will re-plot a course to get you to the next waypoint. When it
does this, it may plot a course that is at variance with your route
sheet.
If you have a route sheet handy, and a GPS, there's no personal cost
to using them to corroborate your navigation choices.
my 2 cents
Greg
Jeff Loomis
On May 12, 2:40 pm, NickBull <nick.bike.b...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Some GPS Advice and Settings for randonneurs:
This is great advice and I wish I had known this stuff before getting
a GPS for cycling. I learned it all myself through painful
experience. A very important point is getting the right map set. I
bought the wrong one before I realized the routing implications. The
store employees and Garmin web site were not very helpful. That said,
I pretty much gave up on using a GPS for cycling because of my
unwillingness to work around all the mentioned limitations (50 point
route max, mismatching routing between PC and GPS, cumbersome and time
consuming route entry, problems with off-road bike paths). Also, my
older Vista C is quite slow at route calculation so when starting a
new route (required every 50 waypoints) it can take several minutes to
calculate directions. Mainly I decided I had better things to do with
my time before a ride than spend 2 hours plotting out the GPS route.
Once you do get it working, it is nice to be able to keep riding and
cut out time wasted poring over cue sheets and putting in bonus
miles. When I do use mine I do so for new and unfamiliar rides where
I don't have a cue sheet. I kind of fall into the group that thinks
that following a cue sheet is a basic randonneuring skill so that's an
additional reason I don't use it on brevets. I entirely understand
why others use a GPS, though, and I may do so in the future. I am
hopeful the technology will advance so that the available devices are
more suited to planning and following cycling routes.
Jeff Loomis
Seattle, WA
NickBull
He's a strong, fast rider, so this was not a DNF event for him. But
for me, it probably would have been the end of my ride.
Just to prove it's not impossible to do bonus miles with a GPS: On the
last permanent that I rode, I did manage to squeeze in 2 or 3 bonus
miles despite having the GPS. First, there was a bike path section
that I didn't bother to put in the GPS -- and so I wasn't routing as I
rode the bike path. Since I "know" the bike path, I just looked for
the end, not realizing my turn-off was before the end. The second two
missed turns both occurred on downhills in high traffic areas where I
was focused on automobiles and survival and didn't hear the plaintive
little beeps. But I caught the error fairly quickly when I noticed
the "distance to turn" going up. So that brings my GPS bonus mile
total to about ten out of the last 10,500 miles.
I simply wouldn't have been able to finish BMB in time without the
GPS. After my riding partner DNF'd with hypothermia, I had less than
3-1/2 hours to ride 35 miles with two 500' climbs in a monster
downpour. I could barely even see my GPS, let alone try to read a cue
sheet. Up til then, I'd been checking one against the other as
carefully as I could, but from that point I realized I was totally
dependent on the GPS to get to Brattleboro. I made it with 20 minutes
to spare. DNF'ing because I couldn't read the cue sheet fast enough
would have been disappointing.
Harry Spatz
bicycle paths. How would I know where to put them if the paths are not in
the mapping software? My "route" ends at the bike path with a waypoint
labeled "bikep" so I know to expect the bike path, and I immediately start
my GPS on the next route, the first waypoint of which is at a point on the
road beyond the bike path. This way I have a visual as to how far I am from
that first waypoint on the new route and I ought to see the distance
decreasing to it, even though I am not on a road known to the GPS. I may
need the queue sheet to know when to get off the bike path, however. If I
miss the bike path turn I will see the mileage to the 1st waypoint
increasing.
"Auto recalculate" is a big mistake to use on brevets. It removes your
defense against going off course. It will recalculate a way to get to your
end destination but not necessarily on the right roads at all and you might
not even know it did this. As a general rule you do not want to purposely
"recalculate" either, because this could have the same results. If I press
"recalculate" my GPS will ignore the intermediate waypoints and figure its
best route to the last one-not at all what I want. If I need to restart the
navigation of a route I will tell the GPS to start navigating another route
(just so it will forget the route it was doing) and then cancel that one and
start afresh with the one I wish to navigate. Then it performs properly.
If you must deviate from the course, and the mini mall example below would
make your GPS think you were off course, do not allow the GPS to
recalculate! Use "prompt" when off course. This will notify you, but as in
this example, if you know you are off course, just ignore the prompt and it
will soon disappear. Just get back on the bike, go back to the course,
proceed the proper way, and the GPS will resume proper navigation-no
problem. The same thing applies if you miss a turn and see the distance to
the next waypoint increasing. You need not touch a thing on the GPS. Just
turn around and it will navigate you to the missed turn.
Let's say, the bicycle shop in the example below was 2 miles and several
turns off the course. I would save my last position while on course as a
waypoint. Then I would let the GPS navigate me to the bicycle shop. Then I
would navigate back to the aforementioned waypoint. Then I would tell the
GPS to navigate the brevet route. In a few seconds, it will be ready to
take you on your way. You would not want to tell it to navigate the brevet
route from the bicycle shop because it might figure out a route that would
make you miss part of the brevet course.
One thing to remember is that the GPS can make routing errors due to its
idiosyncrasies or your routing errors, but it never makes a mistake as to
where you are (at least within 50' or so). So if you make a waypoint using
your mapping software and mark it with a mileage and direction, and you get
there at the proper mileage, you are no doubt on course. If the GPS
instructs you to take the same road as the waypoint indicates based on a
naming scheme similar to mine, I cannot imagine why you would feel the need
to consult a queue sheet. I suppose there could be a first time, but I have
yet to go wrong under this set of circumstances.
Harry Spatz
-----Original Message-----
From: ran...@googlegroups.com [mailto:ran...@googlegroups.com]On Behalf Of
Greg
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 12:31 PM
To: randon
Subject: [Randon] Re: GPS Advice and Settings -- revised
NickBull
screen or isn't expensive enough for you, for only $200 more you can
get the Colorado 300, which has a bigger screen but is otherwise
pretty comparable with the HCx. Of course it weighs a bit more, too.
And the bike mount that Garmin sells comes with zipties, which seems a
little goofy.
>
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Bob Kassel
I like the GPS for a few reasons - learning the route, making sure
that there are no errors on the cue sheet in direction or distance,
but mainly I can relax when I am riding, not constantly calculating
how much farther to the next turn to make sure I don't miss it. This
information is right there in front of me all the time.
>
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