Route planning, waypoints, POI's and tracks

[nodrogrextab]

I have come to the Active 10 from a garmin background after I lost my Oregon to the Solent while sailing recently. The Active 10 has a lot to commend it but I am finding the differences in route planning, handling waypoints, POI's, tracks etc incredibly frustrating.

I do long distance events like the Three Peaks Yacht Race which involve coastal sailing, cycling, and mountain running all in one event - but I often do long distance fell running and cycling - e.g. lands end to john o groats planned for July - separately.

The issues are these:

For sailing (racing) a course is announced which takes in several buoys in the solent. We know the locations of the buoys before the race starts and they are posted on the internet as a .gpx file – but we don’t know which buoys will be used for the course or the order in which we will have to round them.

With the Garmin I would load the positions of all the buoys as waypoints before the season starts then for each race when the route was announced – typically ten minutes before the gun – I would create a new route quickly by selecting the buoy waypoints already in the unit. Often, the race organizers will announce a new position and ‘lay’ an inflatable buoy - this new waypoint would have to be entered and added to the route. Once the race starts I would then have all of the information I needed –heading, bearing to next waypoint, name of waypoint,distance to waypoint, eta etc.

On the Active 10 – I upload the .gpx file and I don’t get waypoints, I get POI’s. I can find no way to store waypoints for use in route planning or to use POI’s to construct a route any more complex than a GoTo. It seems the only way to construct a route is by using the map to visualize the POI’s and then to create new waypoints over the top. Unfortunately I can’t see the names of the POI’s just the icons and this makes it impossible – however even if I guess correctly I end up with unnamed waypoints in a route and although I would get the heading and bearing information etc. I would get the actual name of the buoy just the wp2, wp3 etc. I can’t see any way to do this and I doubt a workaround would be fast enough in the context of a race.

For long distance cycling I would also like to have the above functionality but in many ways it is less important. I would like to create a route by named waypoint or (POI) and use that it on the Active 10 but I would also like to follow a specific ‘track’ that ensures I take my well considered route to the next waypoint (e.g. minor road, off road track etc) – On the Garmin, I would draw a track in Fugawi maps and export to the unit. I would then just ‘follow the line’. It seems that on the Active 10 this is not possible and that creating tracks means that you have to do the route first and save the breadcrumbs – am I mistaken?

Also I paid £79 for access to Route Planner oping to be able to deal with some of the above issues. I can't and currenty it doesn't import .gpx files for me at least - have requested support from Satmap on this subject. Bikely and others do a far better job and have a great deal more functionality so after paying heavily for the unit, then the maps, then the route planner I am beginning to feel slightly peeved.

Sorry it's so long but help - feedback would be great. I would love to love this device.

Cheers!

[jonesbach]

(1) Can't help you on point.

(2) Not sure I understand you regarding track, and apologies in advance if I'm not getting the point. In Satmap terminology a track is what you get 'real time' and a route is obtained by conversion, designed on Satmap, or imported. There is no reason why you can't create a route(what I think you refer to as track) on your favourite software(Fugawi or whatever) and import into the Satmap. You can then activate and follow this route.

(3) I'm not enamoured with the route planner, but you should be able to import gpx files. Unfortunately, gpx is a standard that is not very standard, I'll send you a PM with my email address, if you could send me a copy of the file I'll have a look at it.

[Gibbo10]

I'm a big fan of satmap, but I think there are some things that you used to do with your Garmin that are not possible with Satmap, I will try to answer.

[nodrogrextab]

Hi, many thanks for the responses. I have resigned myself to the general limitations of all GPS devices and like you have come up with work arounds for their various limitations. I'm hanging on to the Active 10 because it does some things really well. But I have also bought another Oregon 300 on ebay (received today) which will be my main device - because I need the navigational not positional functionality for racing. Frankly I feel the Amazon reviews have got the balance about right - you either love it, hate it or are prepared to live with it.

Initial view from the weekend:

Walking - brilliant thought difficult to see the map in bright sunlight..However I learned stuff about the route I didn't know!

Cycling - Frustrating / annoying in sunlight with the glare from the perspex cover making navigation tough at any pace - may be improved by mounting on the stem rather than the handlebars. Bottom half blackish when wearing my polarised oakley sunglasses - made things worse. But - got from A-B on a brand new route and discovered loads of interesting POI's thanks to the detailed OS content. Navigation - generally excellent although the thick route line obscures the detail of the map.

Screen brightness and battery life - ouch

We need a detailed 2010 review on this excellent site!

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