Travelling in Europe

[Gee-Pee]

I left home on Tuesday and am now in Austria. Navman was erratic on secondary roads in E Germany - twice directed down farm lanes ending up in farmyards! In Belgium (full maps loaded) Navman tried to send me down to roads nearing Brussels which would have taken me south and away from my route. Nearing Aachen again tried to send me off my route. Most worrying as normally I would have obeyed without question. In the area (Vienna) no problems and could not done without it. Problems over next few days as have to go to Czech Rep. and then to Poland before returning here then down to Slovenia. No maps? Have to make do with the paper ones.
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Gee-Pee
Lifetime member PGPSW - time rapidly decreasing

[djmek]

Nice Job :P now this is intended as polite constructive points, so please take it that way.
On such a Long "tour" I personally would have done a lot of research and planning before I followed an instruction to drive down a farm lane. Even from a state of the art Sat/Nav built in, in some top of the range Expensive cars.
Having researched maps, maybe online or books, I might then trust the 510 to direct me on route, but common sense would make me decide if the road was not the one I "should" be looking for, just like here i would think, hold on a minute, this looks like a backroad.
But it's interesting that you say some countries are not covered by the european maps, when you said "no maps" did you mean your not trusting the 510 or that there is no coverage on the euro maps provided.?
German roads as you said can be erratic, a bit like the irish roads in my opinion.
But good news for the irish roads though, there changing to driving on the right hand side of the road next month, and if it works out, there going to let the buses and the trucks drive on the right hand side too.

















I know its old and bad.
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2 x ICN-510 units now, 1 USA Unit and 1 UK Unit. Both working great and set up to perfection.
..............Route Type
Quickest.......Maximum Left.
Preference for Motorways & Freeways...More Often......Maximum Right.
Preference for Urban Roads

[Tim Buxton]

[Rich-1]

Gee-Pee, I hope you found your way back. I am doing a similar trip next month and wondered if its worth investing in a large SD card (1Gb?) so as to have all the W. European maps (which I have yet to buy) working seemlessly. Would it then be possible to plan a through route via France, Belgium, Germany to Austria in one go, or would each map module need to be loaded up/activated separately, on crossing the border, bearing in mind that France & Belgium are in one module, and Germany & Austria on another. Any thoughts/views would be appreciated.
Rich-1

[m62-to-hull]

From my experience with full Euro maps, I doubt you'll plan all that in one go. My 510 has a 512Mb card in it with just basemaps for the continent. When I do say NE England to Berlin, it runs out of memory. So no long journeys can be planned. Bloody annoying but I guess I'll have to plan it from the assumed best channel port and go from there. Gggrrrr

[Gee-Pee]

[Gee-Pee]

Back home with 4222 miles on the clock. Really impressed with the Navman - even got me out of an Auchen car park in St Quentin!! Used with a bit of intelligence(!) I can dispense with my old navigator - my wife can now nod off. Found the 512Mb card more than adequate BUT I do carry a laptop so my return journey involved removing some of the detailed maps of areas and installing others.

Note for future users, the maps are in regions (ie Germany has Bayern, etc. Italy Veneto) and you need a paper map sometimes to find out the names of these regions to install.

If anyone is doing a simlar trip and wants some advice, post a query.

Will now get down to planning next years trip.
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Gee-Pee
Lifetime member PGPSW - time rapidly decreasing

[eurothug]

Hi,

I travel eastern europe a lot ... first time I did it with a laptop and gps mouse, ( those were the days, when I enjoyed getting lost )

And I just returned 10 days ago from a long trip to the east..

I have used navman St pro , tomtom, destinator, and a lot more, I have two ppc,s setup in the car, one is a ipaq with a navman gps sleeve, and one is a mio with built in gps.

IF you treally want to have a smooth ride get an ipaq, its screen is bigger and better, and the display can be clearly seen in the sun, ( most cannot ), the mio included.

Software, I have tried them all, the best is tomtom, for many reasons, but one reason is that the recalc is really fast, ( mind you destinator is not bad as well ). which is a must for multi circular junctions :-). Destinator I have to say is extremely good at street level, and I like the wake up call pre 3 kils before for the turn, keeps you on your toes :-).

Plot your total route from west to east on a PC program like route master or something and then use the border points from west to east as markers, and transfer your markers to your PPC maps.

Western europe, well Navman st pro is full of map bugs, I use tomtom major roads of europe, then switch over to tomtoms eastern europe map at the markers ( borders), while it does not give me street level and does not give me guidance you can plot your route and follow it, ( just throw your eye on the screen every 20 mins ). I did a circular trip of eastern europe Dublin to romania to moldovia back throught Bulgaria and through Serbia and so on. mapping was about 97 percent true for major roads, with the eastern map, which is more than I can say for Navman St pro western maps!.

The eastern europe map covers the whole of eastern europe, even turkey?, I have found only one or two errors with it, if your gps shows you that you are not in the right place just "push on " until you hit a road on the screen then recalc from that. (this map is an old release from tomtom)

I fitted all this on a 128 sd card , the mio I use for street level for western europe.( 1 gig)

I know that there will be a real european map( east and west ) out shortly, this will probably be 1 gig at least in size, the major problem with most mapping is that each country is a separate map so you cannot plot a direct route from Dublin to Moscow. This should change shortly. well I hope it does. But if not, it makes no diff to me.

Regards.

[Gee-Pee]

I did a circular trip of eastern europe Dublin to romania to moldovia back throught Bulgaria and through Serbia and so on. mapping was about 97 percent true for major roads, with the eastern map, which is more than I can say for Navman St pro western maps!.

Fascinating! Members certainly get around. My final is not really the Forum topic but my experience is that it is impossible to get motor insurance for the ex Yugoslav federation countries (In England) apart from buying at the border - and the cover is then doubtful (but legal). (But then the Irish are more forward thinking about that subject! )

Put my toe into Bosnia (BiH) and Crna Gora (Serbia i Montenegro) this summer but got a bit worried as I had no Insurance. Would like to go further but where can I get cover?

Info about the maps is interesting (ie new maps for E Europe soon) - I presume that is for the Tom Tom as the Navman does give continuous mapping across borders.
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Gee-Pee
Lifetime member PGPSW - time rapidly decreasing

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