GPS points from Chris Scott's Book

[Nick#6]

Hi All,

We are planning a trip South (UK to Cape Town)via Western Africa route - starting early 2007. We have been reviewing / collecting a range of GPS way points from various overland traveller sites and also from Chris Scott's book.

We were wanting to know if a list of all / some of the way points in Chris Scott's Sahara Overland has been created in a down-loadable file anywhere?

Thanks in advance

Nick & Vicki www.langebaan-sunset.com

[Nick#6]

Folks

FYI - We made contact with Chris Scott on this thread topic and he said that he did not have any downloadable files on the data we asked for.......if anyone has created a list of the way points or sub-set by country or route perhaps it could be posted here??

Nick www.langebaan-sunset.com

[Rebaseonu]

I have not yet reported this to Chris but I tried to use points from 2 Mauritanian routes that were published in the book and both contained serious errors. If you have no way to check these printed coordinates against a digital map then be careful with these.

[Sophie-Bart]

Sahara Overland II
...To keep the book up to date the new edition features an updates page

On the first edition of the book their was such a list as well but I cannot seem to find it anymore.

Rebaseonu:
If the errors you found are not listed here maybe you could/should send him a mail about it.

[Frank Warner]

Try looking at the 'tracks 4 africa' .. it is in garmin format.. for nongarmin people you can look at it using 'gpsmapedit' IIRC. Its coverage of morocco is poor (campared to SA) bnut it doe shave at least some of chrises tracks in it. Oh - turn on teh features of teh map to see petrol stations, camp sites .. fairly usefull, but does not contain the descriptions in chrises book.

[Chris Scott]

>>>On the first edition of the book their was such a list as well but I cannot seem to find it anymore.

I did offer this first time round - it was a whole lot of work extrapolating and formating the files and about 1 person a year asked for them so for edition II I did not bother.

>>>Rebaseonu:
If the errors you found are not listed here maybe you could/should send him a mail about it.

I am aware of these annoying typos on some of the Mori routes and as mentioned, list them when I find/am informed of them on the Updates page (thanks SB) and also correct each reprint of the book. The current 1st reprint has caught most of them. In Mori they were in fact fairly easily recognised discontinuities and 'E instead of W', etc but are unnerving nevertheless.

Most errors were on routes not logged by myself and then not spotted when I recieved and edited them but there's a lot of desert out there and I can't do them all! I shall be in Mori next month re-logging some of the book's routes on my way across.

>>>if anyone has created a list of the way points or sub-set by country or route perhaps it could be posted here??
If you mean from the book's routes then it must be said that this would be a copyright infringement which the publisher would take a dim view of unless they gave permission. But from what Frank says it looks like T4A may have done this already in Maroc if they use the book's exact waypoints. Still, most Maroc routes featured were there long before I came along so I can't be bothered to pay R36 to find out!

Chris S

[a1arn]

Wikimapia now gives co ordinates for most places.

They have an error that ranges from 30 to 250 m, at least in India. My Legend c unit uses wgs 84, changing the datums did not help much. The error is not consistent either, varying from place to place.

That said, it will still get you to within 250 m of your target if you can locate it oin wikimapia, probably a lot closer.

You can mark waypoints using the map screen on your GPS - simply move the pointer till the co ordinates and the wikimapia co ordinates are the same, and you have your PROVISIONAL waypoint. When you get to the exact spot, you can mark it accurately.

[Frank Warner]

Originally Posted by Chris Scott

>>>[I]But from what Frank says it looks like T4A may have done this already in Maroc if they use the book's exact waypoints.

Errr No. T4A have a strict policy of ONLY using peoples GPS tracks .. ones they have travelled and recorded themselves. This avoids copy write, errors in paper maps ... and keeps it simple. Well relatively. They have a demo map you can download for free .. it is not the latest, but gives a fair idea of the data .. Certainly much more info than any book could hope to have.

The more traveled roads are a combination of a number of peoples tracks .. making a much better (more acurate, more detilaed) representation. I'd buy it if i were a regular traveller to the region. Certaily I'll contribute my tracks through the place .. even though I'm only going once (at this stage). It all helps others that come after.