Over the years I have ridden to many different places on my bicycle, and quite often I have
ended up getting lost. I have been lost in some very unusual places too. Once I was on a dirt road
that disappeared into the James River as if the road was a boat ramp, even though the map
showed that it went across. Probably long ago the road had been served by a ferry and it had
never been removed from the map after it had closed.
Usually I don't have trouble when I ride locally since I have been riding these roads for
years. It is when I head out to new places on a bike tour is when I have the most difficulty. In the
past I would arm myself with maps and cue sheets which would bulge from my rear pockets and
blow in the wind while I held them with one hand while holding the bars with the other. There was
always anxiety about trying to find the correct turn. Confidence in the maps is never reinforced
when you realize that the signs have different road names than the ones you have on your
sheets.
With all this dissatisfaction concerning navigation I was pleased to receive a Garmin GPS
12 receiver and the optional handlebar mount for Christmas 1998. A GPS receiver calculates its
latitude and longitude position from satellite signals broadcast by the Department of Defense.
This in itself is not very useful unless you have a good map with you.
The GPS becomes more useful to bicycle navigation by using some of the additional
features built into the unit. It is able to store 500 positions as "waypoints" and a series of 30
waypoints as a "route". By storing the positions of turns on a ride as waypoints on a route the unit
will navigate you from turn to turn.
When navigating a route the unit will give you a bearing and a distance to the next turn.
The GPS will determine the direction of travel when it is moving on the bicycle and will display
the bearing as an arrow on the display. The majority of the time the arrow will point in the
direction of travel with the distance counting down toward zero as you get closer to the next turn.
As you approach the turn the distance will reduce until it is almost 0. The unit will then
decide that it has arrived at the turn and will update the bearing and distance toward the next
waypoint. When this works properly the arrow will turn to the right or left as you approach your
turn. When it doesn't go well you will find yourself stopped at a T intersection with the unit telling
you to go 0.03 miles straight ahead. At least you know you are at the turn but you might need to
check the cue sheet.
Obtaining the positions of the turns and managing the routes is best done with a computer,
and at this point I must tell you that I use a Macintosh so how I do this will not apply directly to
those using PC's. The part that will apply is that GPS is still on the cutting edge as far as practical
real world applications so commercial software is hard to find and shareware applications are the
norm.
DeLorme Street Atlas allows me to obtain the positions of the intersections on my route. I
designate the start of my route with each turn stored as a stop. The end of the route is designated
as the finish. The program will build a cue sheet while I make these selections with each stop's
position listed with it. However, I have not found the DeLorme program to be useful for
downloading the route to the GPS unit.
To move the route over to the GPS unit I use a shareware program for the Macintosh
called GPSy, available from www.gpsy.com. GPSy works with saved routes in the form of a
text file so that you can edit them easier than you can with the DeLorme software.
I simply copy and paste my route from the DeLorme program to a text editor.
Each waypoint stored in the GPS unit must have a unique six character name. I will edit the names of
the waypoints at this time to give them a name in the proper form and also add a header to the
top of the file so that the GPSy program will know what type of data it is looking at.
To load the route into the GPS is simple to do by selecting the text file from within the
GPSy program. Routes and waypoints are easy to manage between the computer and the GPS
either by using text files or a database program.
There are many internet web pages concerning GPS and I would recommend the GPSy site as an excellent starting point. It has an extensive list of links to many GPS web pages that
provide solutions for PC's, Palm Pilots, and Macs. Many of the best solutions are shareware
solutions provided by people who are interested in using GPS units in their activities.
I have found mine to be very helpful in following routes I have made in unknown areas. I
find that I consult my maps and cue sheets less often while riding and feel reassured when road
markings do not correspond to map markings. If I deviate from the route it is easy to navigate back
to it since the GPS gives you a bearing back to the route. It may be a useful tool you wish to
investigate as well.
Page maintained by Tom Sheffield and last
revised on Monday, February 20, 2000.
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