which GPS for trans Am touring?

[FredHiltz]

Enjoy yourself, check out the views, get lost and have some adventure.  Lose the tech stuff!

LOL, stanurycki! Suit yourself, but I can do all those things except get lost when I have my GPS. Lose it? Might as well try to tear the iPod away from a teenager.

Fred

[stanurycki]

Fred, I see what you mean. Once we become familiar with something useful it's very hard to do without. Air conditioning and automatic garage door openers come to mind. I guess it boils down to the individual cyclist and what they feel is essential. For me, not even a cell phone was needed on the Northern Tier last summer.  Part of my adventure was going into a local establishment, ordering a beer and asking "where in the hell am I at"?
Good Riding, Stan

[brinnie]

Hi Nick I too have a Garmin III+ GPS and like it very much but if you want to take long trips the batteries burn up real quick on a bicycle . But there is a solution to your problem and that is to use a Voltage Regulator With a 6v-3w bicycle generator . I been using such a setup for over 6 years now with no problems also you can charge cell phones with this arangement.

[brinnie]

 12-17-04 @ 11:43 AM
  I've done a lot of cross-country adventure touring on my BMW R80G/S motorcycle, I have a Garmin GPSIII+ mounted on the bike and wired into the 12v electrical system.  I'm addicted, and I'd like to have GPS on my bicycle for next years trans am tour, but I'm wondering about batteries, battery life, and weight.  The GPSIII+ (admittedly old technology) feels like a pig in terms of weight when I stuff it full of batteries, and it will burn through a set in no time if I'm running it continuously on self-contained battery power.  

What are folks using on bicycles these days?  Is there anything out there that will run on solar power?

Nick e-mail me at feftonbradock @aol.com and I will give you information on how to build a voltage Regulator that will work your GPS off of a 6v-3w bicycle generator. Lots of luck on biking ventures.
 

[FredHiltz]

vanick wrote:

What are folks using on bicycles these days?  Is there anything out there that will run on solar power?

This had some discussion on sci.geo.satellite-nav recently. Apparently there are some chargers with the right power and size for AA cells, but they are all much bigger and heavier than a typical 115v charger.

I use a Garmin GPSMap 60C, which is typical of present-generation units. It runs about 14 hours on a pair of 2400 maH NiMH cells in the summer, half that in the winter. That is with no use of the backlight. With three pair on board I would need to find 115v power only every five days or so.

Fred

[kenm]

Hi,
I really appreciate the advice that I have picked up from this forum.  Particularly From FredHiltz.  In part based upon this advice, I have recently purchased the Garmin 76C with City Select.  The first major trip I am planning is the AC Southern Tier, beginning mid Oct'05.  I have downloaded the waypoints, and played with them a bit.  I have not actually tryed to load the whole route nor the maps to my 76C, but reducing to 1000 way points, look like it will be a task.  Has anyone done that? And if so is it something that could be shared?
thanks,
KenM

[FredHiltz]

Hi Ken. Take a look at the "The Northern Route Waypoints" thread, where ptaylor writes about doing just that.

Fred

[ptaylor]

I've been working at it. I don't think it is possible; but I havn't given up yet.

[ptaylor]

I also appreciate Fred's advice and got the same unit you got. I  have done a 550 mile east coast trip using the Adventure Cycling waypoints , and I love the GPS. It also is great in my car, but you really need a navigator as you can't drive and look at the directions at the same time - especially  in cities.

There are some problems.

The AC waypoints are off by a few meters in some cases - it will have you turn left and then do a u-turn after a short distance.  Just look at the map window and you can see these errors as obvious.

Also, when the 76C is set to 'bicycle', it sometimes takes you off a major highway and puts you on a quiet sidestreet...this is nice unless it cost you a lot of distance.  Look at the AC hard-copy map to decide if you want the quiet sidestreet (probably not).

[FredHiltz]

The AC waypoints are off by a few meters in some cases - it will have you turn left and then do a u-turn after a short distance.  Just look at the map window and you can see these errors as obvious.

I have seen the same thing. The maps in my receiver, Garmin City Select v6, and the maps used to mark the AC waypoints, Garmin Metroguide v4, do vary by a few meters.

Out of curiousity, I checked several against the gold standard, aerial photos from Microsoft's Terraserver. City Select is almost always more accurate, but not every time. I think the Navteq database used there is newer and better than the TeleAtlas database in Metroguide v4.

The difference is not large enough to affect navigation, but if it becomes bothersome, you can easily move the waypoints in MapSource. Be sure to set them right on divided highways, or you will get some bizarre routes!

Fred

[ptaylor]

Fred.

Now this is interesting.

I just upgraded from City Select v6 to CitySelect v7.  Some of the waypoints I entered with the v6 map are off by a few meters in v7.

I guess there is room for improvement in the technology.  But I still love my Garmin GPSMAP 76C.

Gramps

[FredHiltz]

The change is in the maps, not the 76C, I'm sure. In addition to the better accuracy of intersections that I mentioned earlier, I found City Select usually closer on the locations of points of interest, although I was able to test fewer of those.

Just out of curiousity about v7, are these changes happening to intersections, POIs, or both?

Fred

[ptaylor]

Fred.

The changes between v6 and v7 City Select are to intersections. There may also be changes to POI, but since I didn't waypoint any of them, I can't tell.

The more I have worked with CitySelect, the more errors I find. I reported one error to a web site, but I feel it fell on deaft ears. I know of 4 other obvious errors near where I live, but I don't see any value in reporting them to a black hole.

Has anyone else in this forum reported errors?

Gramps

[FredHiltz]

Hi Gramps,

I have not reported any problems myself, but notice the topic comes up often in the newsgroups. The general reaction is the same as yours.

However, Garmin has an Error Report Form on their cartography page. They presumably forward the reports to Navteq, who supply their maps. Navteq has a Driver Feedback page on their web site. Both companies seem to take it more seriously than a simple feel-good PR effort.

Corrections cannot be quick. I suppose our reports get collected and collated with many others into a list for the next time a road crew visits the area, then the correction gets into a new map release that we can buy one or two years later, when we have forgotten our tiny contribution. Intersections, though, might be done faster from aerial photos.

Anybody else? I too would like to know if these reports are worth the trouble.

Fred

[jblodgett]

In 1998 my wife and I did the the Great Divide mountain bike route.  I used a GPS III and had stored all of the major waypoints for the route in it.  I used a solar panel from Solar World, and connected it to a NiCad battery pack and to the GPS.  When the sun was out, the solar panel charged the battery pack and powered the GPS.  When the sun was not out, the battery pack powered the GPS until that ran down, and after that the alkaline batteries internal to the GPS took over.  In 2500 miles of riding, I never lost GPS once due to loss of power. I never had to change the alkaline batteries either. People laughed at me for being such a geek but I never got lost and they did.