GPS help with routing

I would like some help. Friends and i are planning the TAT in June, i have the TAT maps from Sam. We collectivley purchased a 76CSx. It came with Way point manager, this must not be a routable map, and doesn't have the lessor roads. So we bought Topo 100k for NA, installed, loaded the local map areas around us to play with it. this must not be a routable map either as it makes straight lines between points. next we took the gps out and wanted to see if it would route on roads to nearby cities, nope, the navagation takes us down some roads but then crosses straight over a lake or something. Yes we have it set to "follow Roads". Thus we are depressed we blew our dough on something we cannot figure out. why won't the gps routes correctly on roads. Why can't we enter way points from and create a route that will follow the roads... what are we doing wrong?

we are depressed, not excited about the trip anymore, we have read tutorials for the past week, just can't make any progress.

thanks for any help to get us back on track.

Well, you need routable maps! City Navigator NT. The topo 100K is useful for trip planning on the computer (as a supplement to City Nav), but the elevation lines kind of clutter the small screen - and it's not routable!

You need to understand that a GPS does not replace a good paper map. A GPS is a handy, useful tool but is not to be religiously followed and relied upon. And if you are making up long routes, you are likely to find they are unrideabel in whole. That has been my experience anyhow.
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I can’t help you with 76CSx but you need routable maps installed in the unit.

What you're doing wrong is not doing your homework before you shell out your money. You should have bought City Nav to have routing capability. It will have most of the TAT on it. You can still use the Topo mapset as a backup to City Nav when you're on the TAT and run into places where you may have to reroute. In certain parts of the country, Topo can show roads that City Nav doesn't and that can help you find your way around to be able to pick up the TAT again. I had both mapsets loaded in my GPS when I ran the TAT and it saved my butt a few times.

You're just starting your learning curve with all this. But reading all the tutorials you can find will help you get your paper TAT maps converted to tracks that you can enter in your GPS. Once you get the hang of it, it will go quick.

You will not be able to road route the entire TAT anyway. Some of the roads are just not on any routeable map software. I don't say that to discourage you from buying something such as NT, but you are still going to have to find a work around for the spots that don't route properly. Direct, or off-road routing will have to be used.

At least look at this method. You can use it with the software that you have.

Chin up, adapt and overcome. You are going to have to use that philosophy quite a few times before you dip your toes in the Pacific.

Ain't that the truth.

You can try joining here and read up a bit.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Garmin_GPSmap_76C/
Get the free Garmin Basecamp or Roadtrip (I like Baescamp better) program.
go to http://www.miscjunk.org/mj/mp_main.html and pick up some free maps to load into Basecamp. try plugging your waypoints in Basecamp and then switch the maps around. Not sure how much you can load up to the 76C (made for Marine, but still works), but work out the maps you want. Go play.
You have read the manual and played along with it right?

so i looked again on the GARMIN site, could not find where any map says its routable or not, thus how does one find where the spec says its routable. or else i am blind, and i am sure someone will point this out if its the case.

You could use tracks instead of routing. Just a suggestion.

Also, there's lots of good info in the stickies here that describe how-to and why-would-you. That's where I picked up most of my basic knowledge, just some light reading here. Otherwise you are on a hiding to nothing if you're not familiar with the terminology and operation of a GPS.

I don't get to use MapSOurce, and don't remember what it looks like. I have a Mac. Basecamp for Windoze (and Mac) is a separate program from Mapsource (piece of crap, I remember)
I had to convert mapsource to a different image from Windoze to Mac. Use MapInstall (this is Windoze) to install it into the computer and then can open it all in BaseCamp or RoadTrip. With these last two programs, you can download FREE maps and install them with MapInstall, then see, use, edit, and upload them to your device.
Get MapInstall and Basecamp and go to GPSDepot, download Windoze or Mac version, MapInstall it, Open Basecamp, and look see. Upload, whatever,
If you want some road maps (2008 census) Ibycus USA is one to look at. They get put on your computer for Basecamp to see, not onto your GPS, unless you want it to

The Garmin site is vague on most of the info for their products. They don't say "routeable". They say "turn by turn directions".

https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=1456#featureTab

Resellers usually give a better description of the product.

http://www.gpsonsale.com/software/products/NorthAmerica-CityNav.htm

With some possible exceptions that a noob shouldn't even worry about -

The only Garmin maps that are "routable" are City Navigator and the 24K topo maps.

My suggestion to anyone is they bite the bullet and purchase the latest City Navigator (if your unit doesn't come preloaded with it anyway) and see if it will meet your needs before you buy any topo maps. City Nav shows most roads, even obscure USFS, fire roads, etc.

Once you get into it if you think you need topo you can purchase it or there are even some free options. Not routable though...

i am trying the track method. i found that if one creates a track with say 10 points, stops for a reason, you can't pickup the track and start adding more points to that same track where you left off. makes no sense that you would have to create the whole track in one sitting, sure appears that way. certainly is not user friendly.

Start a new track where you want to continue, then use the "track join" tool to connect them.

You can also go into track properties and cut the track points from the second one and paste them into the first one, but the join tool is easier.

Actually, you can. If you stopped laying out a track for some reason and you saved what you had done so far, then when you want to start adding to it again, open the track file. At the top of the screen Click Edit> new track> ok.

Using the track tool you get after doing all that, start from where you left off in the first track. When you get done, right click on the new track in the window at the left and choose properties. Click on the first point in the track points list> then hit Ctrl-A to highlight all. Then at the top click on the copy icon. Then OK. Right click the first track that you're adding to> go to properties. Click on the last point entry to highlight it. Then click the paste icon at the top. This adds everything you just made in the new track to the end of the original track. If there are more than 500 points in it, click the filter button > choose 500> Click ok. Delete the new track, as you don't need it any more. Then re-save. There may be other methods, this is how I do it.

After any substantial track or route editing, always re-save your work every now and then. Mapsource crashes are not unheard of. It sucks to put a lot of time into something and lose it if Mapsource crashes.

Agreed. The learning curve for noobs is quite steep, but once you get across the terminology and some basic functions it gets much easier (with practice ). There's plenty of angst posted here by noobs (myself included) when learning mapsource and GPS terms. Don't worry, it will come with time.


And read the stickies.

500 points per track, 20 tracks. whats the danger in one long track with 500 points? If you have more than 20 tracks or routes for that matter can they be stored on the sd card and be applied later? i realize the card stores the map itself, ought to be a way to store extra tracks/routes on the card too rather than carry a net book during the trip.

When navigating a track i suppose one just follows the track on the gps, not much info about next turn distance ect right?

If your ride is nothing but long straight roads and no turns, you can go a 100 miles and only use 2 track points and your line will be dead on the road/trail you're following. But if your ride is filled with turns and curves and a lot of roads/trails/intersections very close to one another, having more points in a track like that makes for better resolution as far as the line that you're following on the GPS actually following the desired roads/trails.

Do some experimenting and you'll quickly see what I mean.

Tracks and routes can not be saved to and then accessed by the unit from the SD card later for installation and navigation in the manner you describe. Case in point: Last year for my TAT ride I got my tracks from Oklahoma thru Nevada down to 15 tracks of 500 points and had good resolution. I could only get my Oregon tracks down to 10 tracks of 500 points each, and that was a chore, as the whole track was more than 13,000 points because Oregon is so cut up and difficult to navigate I wanted the best resolution I could get. Well I only had 5 open tracks left that I could upload. So I had all of Oregon on my netbook. When we finished Nevada, that night in camp I deleted off all the tracks in the 60cx we'd ridden already and uploaded the upcoming Oregon tracks.

Right, with tracks you're just following a colored line on the screen. No prompts that tell you to turn in so many feet. It doesn't take long to become accustomed to navigate that way. And you quickly determine what screen resolutions you like best for seeing upcoming changes in direction and detail. I stay around .5 mile. If I'm riding roads/trails that have a lot of intersecting roads/trails that branch off very close from one another, I zoom in to below 800 feet.

I have noticed tho when following a track, I get a beep from the unit when the track makes a significant upcoming direction change. For a long time I thought I was hearing things, as wearing a helmet and ear plugs, I wasn't sure. I'd hear a beep and wonder "what the hell is that?" I finally put it together. So now, if I forget to look at the screen every now and then to make sure I'm still on track and haven't missed a turn somewhere because I was too busy enjoying the ride and scenery, if I hear a beep I look down at the screen to see how I'm doing.

Forgot to mention that you can trick the unit into using very long tracks of up to 10,000 points by naming the tracks ACTIVE LOG 001, ACTIVE LOG 002 and so on.

20 tracks of 500 points is *10,000* points. I navigated 2600 miles of Continental Divide Ride and didn't use that many.

The 60Cx/CSx and 76Cx/CSx can hold 50 routes. 50 points each for "follow roads" autoroutes or 250 points each for "off road" (direct as-the-crow-flies between points) routes.

The distance you can get in a follow roads route with 50 points varies a huge amount depending on what kind of roads you are taking. I was able to get us from Omaha to the Canadian border with one route of only 37 points. 1419 miles. Mostly major roads, but some gravel/obscure stuff.

The reason many prefer tracks over routes:
It's really hard if you try to share/borrow ROUTES (vs TRACKS) with other people. A "follow roads" route is going to be dependent on what GPS, what maps a person has loaded, and how their routing preferences are set up. 10 people with the same file may get 10 different routes. However - a track is a track is a track - always the same no matter what maps you have, even if you have NO maps.

I try to use follow roads routes whenever I can (anytime the whole trip is shown on my Garmin routable maps), because I like the guidance, distance, and ETA information.

When doing the Divide ride (a total of 5300 miles - we rode to and from the Divide route from Omaha, NE) I used a combination of follow roads routes, tracks, and off road routes. Plus I have detailed recorded tracks of the entire ride using the "save track to data card" option. Even including some extra stuff I only used 18 tracks and 7 routes. No netbook needed.

Personally if I was doing the TAT I would use routes as much as I could and save the tracks for the sections that aren't on the Garmin maps. Many people seem to be scared of using routes (because of what I mentioned above I suppose).

I will say that trying to *modify* a route on the GPS is a real pain. I rarely do it.

IMHO - anyone with a 60Cx/CSx or 76Cx/CSx who doesn't have an autorouting mapset installed and/or never uses routes is missing out on at least 50% of what the thing can do.