Hello...and ..erm..HELP!! already! (Garmin GPS map 60Csx)

[BTFB]

Hi,
Nob newbie here saying hello and hoping to get some guidence from more experience and patient GPS'ers.

I have just bought a Garmin GPSMap 60 CSx, installed it with City Europe navigator SD card and installed Mapsource trip and waypoint software on my PC. I hav espent three days reading the manual and playing with this new unit with limited success, which is why I come loaded with stoopid questions

Before I ask let me fill you in on what I am about:
I am setting off this Saturday July 12th on a Bicycle tour. I will Start in Bremen Northern Germany and ride south to Basel In Switzerland. The I will stop for lunch (just a joke!) and head to Montpellier in southern France. Jest me my tent and this new GPS

This is my first ever GPS unit and i need it to store pre planned routes which I plan on a site called www.Bikeroutetoaster.com

I have managed to get it to store a small route (just a 50km ride). But as I will be riding 100km + each day I need it to store longer routes. however each time I try to load in a longe rroute I get a memory error saying not enough memeory from the GPS. So my first set of questions are:

How do I best use this GPS unit to store long routes? Do I need more memory (is that possible and if so how?)

How far apart can I realistically get away with plotting waypoints? I mean I ned to follow the roads closely...but I am running out of waypoints. Should I set one per town, city, village, street, bend...what?

Once i have th eroute in the GPS unit I wan tto change it's name. Currently is seems to call the route CITY to CITY....instead of say 'Pub to home'..or...Friedrichshafen to Basel say. How can I do this?

I wanted to delete an individual route in the GPS, but it only seemed to offer the option to delete ALL saved routes or none. How do I delete a single route fromn the list of saved routes?

I would like to load this GPS with POI files on local campsites in Germany and France. I have installed POI loader software, however I cannot find any POI files of campsites in Europe to upload. Does anybody have any info on where to get hese as I am sure they must exist. I hav edone the google search thing but I must be searching for th ewrong words or something as i cannot find any.

Thi sunit is eating batteries like I eat pasta. How can I improove the battery life? I have the back light off. (Dont forget that on a bicycle I have no access to a PC. I do carry a solar battery charger though).

I have tried to get these answers from garmins on line support pages which to be honest I find totally useless and hard to navigate.

I will be carrying paper maps on this trip as well (at least until I get competent with my new GPS toy!) So i will be able to use the GPS to calculate it's own routes as well. However on a Bicycle it is almost always better for me to prigramme my own route in detail and simply have the gPS follow what i tell it rather than me follow it's own routes which invariably take no account of hills & busy roads Motorways etc (even though I tell it to avoid highways!)

...ok I am sure i will have a few more questions, but those are the ones I have been unable to answer myself so far. I am sorry to 'dump' all these on you in my first post, hopefully one day when I am aGPS expert I will be able to help out rather than take out, but for now all help/guidence will really help me.
Many thanks indeed.
_________________
To be a rock and not to roll

[Frabble]

The specification for your unit is 1000 waypoints and 50 routes with up to 250 points each, so are you exceeding one of these limits? This data is stored in the GPS internal memory which can't be changed.
When you transfer routes to a Garmin auto routing unit, only the points are transferred and the unit will recalculate if you wish to follow roads. Normally only the start and end would be needed but because of the differences in the processes used to calculate by the unit, other routing programs and Mapsource for that matter (if you had bought the maps on DVD), it may be necessary to insert additional intermediate or via points to route the exact path you wish to follow. It depends on the nature of the route but I'd figure that any main centres you wish to pass through should be enough. Note that there are Follow Road options on the unit in the Setup for Routing to specify the vehicle for which the routes are calculated (e.g. Bicycle instead of Car/Motorbike) and this will affect the result.

You need to select the route and then highlight the name if you wish to change it - you're limited to 13 characters. To delete a single route, select it and push Menu to get the option.

For POI campsites, Google is your friend. One of the first found is http://www.gps-data-team.com/ - there are many others.

Don't bother with using alkaline batteries, NiMH rechargables are the way to. A fully charged 2700mAH pair will give you about 20 hours with no backlight. There is a GPS Battery Saver mode which is supposed to extend battery life by 30% but it relies on always having good satellite reception and the saved tracking data may not always be accurate.

Good that you're also taking paper maps.

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