It's completely useless....
Wrong!
I have just returned from a Wander to the very rural Morvan region of a France, using homemade quite intricate BaseCamp routes around the very small roads along the hills, lakes, woods and lanes that litter the area. All of the routes were shared with five other riders, each using different devices and / or Mapsource or BaseCamp on their own computers. Each route ran very well.
The couple of mistakes I did make were self-inflicted, missing a small turning - whilst riding and simultaneously trying to avoid a pothole or tractor - and / or when the device was sufficiently lacking in satellite signal as to make it unsure as to where it was, zooming the map squares around as it struggled to display an inaccurate position properly.
Out of a thousand mile, four days away jaunt, mostly on D, N or C type French roads (all homemade in BaseCam) I think there was one genuine routing error as we approached Troyes on our return leg, where the device tried to send us off a perfectly good D road, down a genuine unmade goat track. I have checked the route on my return. The error is not there in the route I created at home; it can only have occurred when the device imported the route from its own memory, converting it into a route from the original .gpx file.
Even then, I think the error is probably man made, at least in origin. I have looked at our track and at the route. When creating the original route on my computer, I think I placed a via point / routing node right at the mouth of the very small track and another maybe several miles away. The computer with its much bigger computing power was able to plot the route correctly, missing out the goat track. When making the conversion, the device, with its limited computing power, had simply done its best, routing me along the goat track to join two points up.
It wasn't life threatening. The routing error was so obvious, requiring nothing more than a very swift U-turn and then following the signs to Troyes (it helps if you know roughly where you are going) and all was well.
Get to know and love your BaseCamp and Garmin GPS devices. They are both really very good.
PS To the 'I never use a GPS device, I use the sun and my inbuilt sense of direction' brigade. I defy you to have ridden the same very small, often un-signposted, Morvan roads and tracks, with five other bikes in tow, without getting horribly lost or having to stop every five minutes in the woods and lanes to consult your almanac. Yes, 'it's all part of the fun, mate' but that novelty soon wears pretty thin.
Wrong!
I have just returned from a Wander to the very rural Morvan region of a France, using homemade quite intricate BaseCamp routes around the very small roads along the hills, lakes, woods and lanes that litter the area. All of the routes were shared with five other riders, each using different devices and / or Mapsource or BaseCamp on their own computers. Each route ran very well.
The couple of mistakes I did make were self-inflicted, missing a small turning - whilst riding and simultaneously trying to avoid a pothole or tractor - and / or when the device was sufficiently lacking in satellite signal as to make it unsure as to where it was, zooming the map squares around as it struggled to display an inaccurate position properly.
Out of a thousand mile, four days away jaunt, mostly on D, N or C type French roads (all homemade in BaseCam) I think there was one genuine routing error as we approached Troyes on our return leg, where the device tried to send us off a perfectly good D road, down a genuine unmade goat track. I have checked the route on my return. The error is not there in the route I created at home; it can only have occurred when the device imported the route from its own memory, converting it into a route from the original .gpx file.
Even then, I think the error is probably man made, at least in origin. I have looked at our track and at the route. When creating the original route on my computer, I think I placed a via point / routing node right at the mouth of the very small track and another maybe several miles away. The computer with its much bigger computing power was able to plot the route correctly, missing out the goat track. When making the conversion, the device, with its limited computing power, had simply done its best, routing me along the goat track to join two points up.
It wasn't life threatening. The routing error was so obvious, requiring nothing more than a very swift U-turn and then following the signs to Troyes (it helps if you know roughly where you are going) and all was well.
Get to know and love your BaseCamp and Garmin GPS devices. They are both really very good.
PS To the 'I never use a GPS device, I use the sun and my inbuilt sense of direction' brigade. I defy you to have ridden the same very small, often un-signposted, Morvan roads and tracks, with five other bikes in tow, without getting horribly lost or having to stop every five minutes in the woods and lanes to consult your almanac. Yes, 'it's all part of the fun, mate' but that novelty soon wears pretty thin.
