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Yes, that worked perfectly, thanks!

Thanks, I'll try those changes.

I am building a Garmin map, one of the items being maps is a railroad. I am using the standard type X14 and have made a custom TYP file :

[_line]
Type=0x14
UseOrientation=Y
Xpm="32 5 4 1"
"= c #202020"
"  c none"
"3 c #202020"
"4 c none"
"================================"
"     =======         =======    "
"     =======         =======    "
"     =======         =======    "
"================================"
;12345678901234567890123456789012
string1=0x04,Railroad
[end]

Display in Basecamp is perfect - but on a Garmin Oregon some sections of track are displayed with spaced pixels - see attachments. Also, the railroad only appears on the Oregon when zoomed in much further than specified.

Any help much appreciated!

Have a look at GPSU (www.gpsu.co.uk) - there is a function to convert tracks (with thousands of points) to routes (with tens of points)

Back Country Navigator has something similar but at least it is an option to switch on and off and comes with a warning ; "Not recommended, Will make map more pixellated, May allow you to read more text"

I do develop smartphone maps. For a distribution format I've settled on SQLITE as that can be used directly by Back Country Navigator, Locus and Maverick on Android also Galileo and Mapplus on iPhone/iPad. But Mobile Atlas Creator (mobac.sourceforge.net) will read the SQLITE files, allow you to view them and output to a whole range of formats.

There is a sample here : http://www.the-thorns.org.uk/opendata/opendown.html

Garmin Maps define zooms by the 'bits per coordinate' field for the IMG file.

I work on this being 8 higher than the 'slippy' zoom level - so bpc 23 = zoom 15. As bpc is limited to 24 this means Garmin Maps can't  have more detail than (the equivalent of) zoom 16.

Also, with slippy maps based on a Mercator projection the scale varies with latitude. At latitude 45 the scale is 30% more

When you say 'scale' for a digital map it is important to remember the pixel pitch/density of the device being used.

For example, at zoom 15 each tile is about 1222 metres East-west at the equator - so 4.7 metres per pixel. If that is on a 'standard' 96dpi display the scale is about 1:18000 as in the table.

Display the same image on a modern smartphone at 450dpi and the scale is 1:84000

I have a GNS2000 GPS that works with both my iPad and with Locus on an Android Smartphone (not that I need it for Android because the internal chip is good - but one has to test these things!).

I have a map that starts as 16GB over 400 tiles. It takes about 5 hours to compile these using a 3.4GHz i7 and it ends up as 900Mb

When I tried running several streams in parallel (it is an 8-core machine)  cGPSMapper crashed. I'm guessing that is because there is some clash of temporary file usage.

When I was building the UK topo, problems with CGPSMapper made me cut the country into tiles 15' high by 30' wide. The largest (as .MP) is 276MB which compiles to 3.6MB.

I extract maps and convert to SQLITE format. I can use the same format on my Android phone with Back Country Navigator and on my iPad with Galileo. (It's a WiFi only iPad but I use a GNS 2000 Bluetooth GPS for location).

If nothing better is available, I download one of the OSM Garmin maps from http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/ and use my MAPC2MAPC to render it as SQLITE. I have used this successfully on trips to Grenada and Mallorca recently.

It is also possible to download aerial imagery from various sources and convert to this format as an alternative to Birdseye (but be aware of licence conditions!)

Brilliant, that works on Windows 10!

I will try it on Windows 7 machine tomorrow and then revise my installation instructions!

I've converted a map and it has made a .gmap folder inside a .gmapi folder.

I have copied these to the C:\Garmin\ folder on another windows PC but Basecamp doesn't see them. Where should they be placed so that Basecamp will find the map?

For weather protection, I use an Aquapac which is light and totally waterproof.

I can work the buttons and touchscreen through it and as it hangs round my neck I won't drop the phone.

And it's good for reading a Kindle in the bath, too!