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This is a good thread... glad to know I'm not the only one

I'll try this myself, but in case one of you knows for sure: will doing this (using the raw track data) maintain the timestamps that I lose when I save tracks and then copy them to mapsource?

Sorry for the lame questions, but I can't get this figured out...

1. Is the "Demo Mode" supposed to simulate navigation? On my old eTrex, you could see the the route in motion. On the Venture HC, there is no movement and the compass page shows 0 mph.

2.) In map setup when I turn marine colors on... The areas that were blue (water) turn white. Is this normal?

Thanks for the help.   

I can tell you for sure that it's supposed to be white in marine colors. About the demo mode, I don't know if I understand your question. My etrex prompts me for demo mode only if it hasn't acquired satellites, in which case there would be no way for the unit to calculate your heading (unless you've got the magnetic compass on) or your speed. I'm not sure if you can have both satellite reception and demo mode on... but then why would you want demo mode on?

Agreed with the previous post; if you have it in "highway" mode you will just backtrack the whole way. If, however, you have it in map mode, it will be obvious that you are crossing your own track, and you can zoom out/in and also move the cursor around the map to figure out which is the correct way to take a shortcut.

Maybe you'll find the elevation profiles fun... these are from a trip over the sierra last weekend. Up Ebbett's pass/monitor pass, roundtrip in Yosemite, and back through Sonora pass. I posted the profiles here: http://bayarearidersforum.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5323227&postcount=620.

It's actually pretty good. Today I followed road signs instead of trusting my trackback and it was useless. Wish I had trusted the little GPS more. I tried using proximity alerts once, and I think that will be very useful (esp. since, using google maps, each turn is a waypoint). Now I'm trying to figure out how to get an elevation profile from logged tracks, but will keep poking around and trying stuff.

Edit: got the elevation profile; in track properties  

Great stuff guys! I need to sink my teeth into google earth and try topofusion... will do 

[But]

Cool stuff... I couldn't get a route from google earth (particularly, I couldn't get my route rather than what google earth deems as fastest/shortest. On top of that, I could only save to .kmz from google earth, which was not read by the converter (of course, this is the first time I use google earth, so I most likely missed something. But I found this post about how to do it directly from google maps, where it's very easy to customize a route: http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2007/06/google_maps_click_an.html#more

1.   Get your driving directions the way you want in Google Maps
   2. Click on the "Link to this page" in the upper right of Google Maps. You should get a little window with a long URL.
   3. Click the URL with the mouse and move the cursor to the right end (you should see something like "&z=11" at the end - which is the zoom level).
   4. Simply append "&output=kml" to the end of the URL
   5. Select the entire URL and copy it to your paste buffer (CTRL-C for example)
   6. Then paste it into your browser's location URL pane at the top (or you can click and drag the selected link to the location pane). Then hit ENTER. This should load up the directions in Google Earth! You won't be able to click and drag to change the directions, but you can view them in 3D.
   7. Once its loaded in Google Earth, hit the "Play" button below the Places pane - or select the "Tools->Play Tour" menu option. This will give you a cool flying 3D tour of the driving directions.

Note that google earth is redundant for my initial objective, but the "tour" is MUCH better than the streetview of the necessary turns in terms of visualizing the route.

Thanks for the help!

Hello, and thanks for replying again. I'll definitely try google earth tonight see how that works; the trackback is definitely very easy to navigate with.

Here's what happens when I do routes: I pick the route and I'm given two choices: Navigate or Map.

Navigate sends me to the next major highway which has nothing to do with the actual route (thus my city navigator comment), so that's useless.

Map maps the start of the route, but as I start moving the caret moves along and outside of my map; I'd have to keep moving the little arrow around to center it right, and can't realistically do that on a bike. But maybe there's something that I should be doing that I'm not?

Hello everyone, newbie again. I switched from a venture to a vista, and bought five (!) microSD cards for $2.90 each (!!) so I have a lot of streets and topo data for a large area around where I'll be moving 

Now the question: I don't have city navigator, but can easily map the route that I want to drive using the ibycus street maps (or to hike using the topo). My problem is: how do I have the vista map my route AND center the display on my current position (so that I can visually follow the route even if I can't get guiding prompts to work)?

I searched for "navigate routes" and only came up with two hits about transparent maps (which I have no clue about, but pretty sure not what I need). Apologies in advance if this is a dumb question... the vista manual is not very thorough.

thanks!
K

Well, that didn't work; it erases the data like waypoints, tracks, and user preferences (sounds etc) but ibycus is still being mapped.

Thanks for the reply...

Being the *very* newbie that I am, I had no clue how to do a system reset. I pored around and found these instructions from Andy at http://www.gpsdiscussion.com/introductions/2097-lost-vermont.html:

With the unit turned off, press and hold the follow buttons: PAGE + Enter on the click stick. Then press and release the POWER. The unit will power up asking if you want to release all user data. Select yes, and the unit will be reset. After the master reset, place your unit outside, so that it has a clear view of the sky for 25 to 30 minutes for the unit to acquire new almanac data.

I'll go home tonight and give it a try; I wanted to post this in case other newbies like me stumbled upon this post and also don't know how to do a hard reset on the Venture.

This is the answer that I have found when looking around the forums... what about deleting maps so as to return to the original basemap? I can't pick a map from the mapsource "trip and waypoint manager," so can't overwrite with that one... is there a manual delete that will work?