Hi, its nice to meet such a wonderful group. I am wondering what your opinions are on various trip planning methods. Is it to my advantage to use electronic maps vs paper? I am plannin an East - West RTW trip for summer 2008. Starting from Calgary to St. Johns London Isle of Man (TT) Zig Zag Europe as far north as Berlin and as far south as Rome - Moscow Trans Siberian Highway - ferry to Japan - San Fran. up th coast back home. I do not have a great many maps currently and I wish to nail down this trip a bit more solidly for budget purposes. Since I am planning on using a Garmin unit for the trip I thought it might be a good idea to use it to plan as well. How feasable is this? Best sources for maps? Opinions welcome. Aslo anything special i should see? The TT and a lap or two on the nurburgring are current hightlights. thanks
ride safe

I beleive many irish outdoor shops sell boots with L and R stamped on them.. Maybe a pair with E and W would help
Once you have the navigational issues sorted, then would be a good time to go buy ( or better still copy) yourself some maps. get a compass, and mybe also an electronic device.. On and Off are good things to learn.

Nope, just teasing I do think paper maps to be more reliable,, the electronic ones maybe easier to use. perhaps a mix of both ( paper for backup )?

Wow! Baptism by fire. I did ask for opinions though. I can read a map just fine. I have a commercial multi-IFR pilots licence, military training, and was even a cub scout I don't however have a garmin 276 or like and do not know if any rout planning capability exists for this unit. I used mapquest to plan Canada. It was easy. I am just looking to get milage at this point for planning purposes. Read costs. For the trip I would like electronic with maps and buddy at the gas station as backup. I just thought if someone knew of software, I don't have to use up a set of jiffy markers planning and modifying my trip. Also if planned electronically I could upload to gps and only have to do it once. Thanks for the response. Keep em comming.

Paper maps are the catalyst of dreams.

Women buy vibrators and men buy GPSs, but there's nothing like the real thing.

from Cleveland on Family Guy "oh thats just nasty"

Paper maps
Good for (general) planning.
Good for asking directions.

Bad for weight and space.

Electronic maps.
Good for detailed planing. Adds up the distances- find you place of geting tyres, oil .. even fuel if that is required.
When linked to a GPS you no longer have to ask "where am I?" ..

Bad for cost.

---
For longer tirps it is not possible to carry all the paper maps required , electonic ones though are very good. Especially if you use teh same storage medium as your digital camera - as you use the maps you can over write with photos. So I'll be buying paper maps as I go .. but carry electonic maps for teh entire trip before leaving.

Your next question is (or should be) 'what kind of electonic map?' - Rater or vector. I'll be using both .. I find that reality is not exactly the same as any map - so I like to have at least two maps - select the one closest to current relaity and use that there... Take a good look in navigation .. maps

__________________
---
Regards Frank Warner
motorcycles BMW R80 G/S 1981, BMW K11LT 1993, BMW K75 G/S

I have used paper maps all of my life but I got a Garmin 76csx last year and its great. Also the 60csx would be good.
They both use Micro SD cards to store the maps. You can get a 2GB card for them now. The MapSourse program is good for planning trips, then download them to the GPS. The MapSourse City Navigator maps for the US and Canada has street maps and most dirt roads and they take about 1.6GB for all the US and Canada. Europe maps are avilable.

Excellent idea in using the same data card for both units. There is a navigation/maps section? I'll look. I did not want to re-invent the wheel here. As with most endeavors it has been done before. Not learning from the mistakes of others is one of our greatest downfalls. thanks, ride safe

For planning, I found paper maps to be the best for a question of size and scale. You get a much better overall view and you can see at a glance the alternatives to the path you originally had in mind. But their major advantage is that they make wandering much more tempting, as in "Why not go to that national park, it's only 2 days away?", or "What's the best way to go from Paris to Moscow? Is it Greece and Bulgaria, or Norway and Finland?"... You cannot think like that on a 4-inch screen, you need a big wall-map spread over the table.

Most paper maps also show the topography and the type of road (interstate, highway, dirt road). In addition, they give the exact distances between cities, unlike electronic maps such as the MapSource WorldMap which only lists distances "as the crow flies" (granted: other electronic maps, like CityNavigator, give the exact distances too but they are not available for all the countries around the world yet).

It's often better to use large scale maps just for the planning, and then purchase more accurate maps locally as you enter each country or continent (the exception being Africa, where you'd better bring the Michelin maps that you used for the planning).

I'm not really familiar with the CityNavigator type of maps but I found the WorldMap very useful (albeit at times outdated or slightly inaccurate). The conjunction of both the GPS (eTrex Vista) and a good paper map made it for me: I would have gotten lost so many times using only either one of these. I think I would not even consider leaving with just a GPS.

With a unit such as the Vista, you can carry the WorldMap CD with you and upload the maps once in a while at an internet cafe (don't forget the GPS cable). With more modern units, high capacity cards exist but they still can't contain the entire world so you have to choose between buying severals cards (expensive) or uploading the one card you have along the road.

Finally, I wrote a list of useful advices about how to use a GPS:
http://www.photobiker.com/store/electronics.html#gps
and also some recommendations about maps. They don't say a lot about the countries you are planning to visit, but you might still find something interesting:
http://www.photobiker.com/store/books.html#maps

Pierre, who loves looking at maps (& Merritt too)
http://www.photobiker.com

__________________
Pierre Saslawsky
http://photobiker.com

Many thanks. Mapsource worldmap "as the crow flies " is not very helpful. I got a copy of it and am convinced that paper is the way to go.

Hi Lonely

Well maybe YOUR woman has to buy a vibrator - we understand that: but surely not all women? Please - no anti-women comments which could put women off motorcycling ...we need many more to correct the imbalance. Its really needed to dilute the excessively macho biking rubbish going around: wouldnt you agree?

Anyway it's men who buy vibrators, called motorbikes....!

good vibrations etc!!!!

All the best!
XXX

Hi Stig

What a fantastic trip...Best wishes to you!!!!!!!!

Thanks. paper maps have been obtained.

Paper maps don't run your batteries down. Unless you look at them at night.

My preferred method of planning is 'winging it'. This involves lots of getting lost. It is considerably more fun and occupies your mind whilst riding long distances.

__________________
"On that? You're nuts!" - My cousin's boyfriend

Current Bikes - Kawasaki KLE500 '05 (May 06)
Previous Bikes - Hyosung GF125 (Oct 05 to May 06)