[pct-l] Transfering Aerial Photos and Maps to a GPS

[Lon Cooper]

John,

You can get around the 500 point limit if you have a Garmin gps with x
in the name such as a 60CSx or Etrex HCx. These have a microSD storage
card and support custom POI's (points of interest).

Here are the steps I used to do this.

1) Open your track in Mapsource

2) Use filter command to convert track into a series of half mile
points. Save the file.

3) Use GPSBable to convert the track into a series of waypoints. It
converts the entire track at once.
http://www.gpsbabel.org/

4) Check the file in Mapsource and save as .gpx file

5) Use Garmin POI loader to send waypoints to the GPS as POI's
http://www8.garmin.com/products/poiloader/

A few more tips that are optional...

I want my waypoints to be numbered starting with 0, and a letter
prefix corresponding to the section name. For example, A000, A001,
A002, etc. for section A. This way I can divide by 2 and get accurate
section mileage.

Unless your tracks are very detailed, the distance will come up short.
For example, a 100 mile trail section might only show to be a 70 miles
in Mapsource. In this case you can adjust your filter distance in step
2 so that you can get an accurate number of points. I want a 100 mile
trail section to have 201 points, counting the 0 point. You can check
the guidebooks or data books to get mileage information on each trail
section.

Make sure your track is going the correct direction, all mine are
south to north. Mapsource will invert the track if you need to reverse
the direction. If the direction is wrong GPSBable will number the
points wrong when you do the track to waypoint conversion.

I copy the coordinates of the first (0) track point in step 2 and then
delete the point. Then when I do step 3 everything will be numbered a
I want except for the missing 0 point.

Add the 0 point back using the copied information in step 4.

A .gpx file is an xml based text file so you can open it in a text
editor and to search/replace to rename "wpt" to "A" or whatever
section you are working on to complete the renaming.

I plan on posting a bunch of these files for free downloading on a web
site I will eventually create at www.pctmap.net
Hopefully I can find the time to get a few of them up this weekend.

Good luck, and let me know if you have any other questions.

-Lon


On Jan 31, 2008 9:52 PM,  <minnjohn1 at aol.com> wrote:
> Lon,
>  I was reading your reply to Strider about "Transferring Aerial Photos ..."
> and the following caught my eye:
>
>
>  "What I did last year was convert tracks of the PCT into waypoints
>  every half mile along the trail. This can be done with the filter
>  command in Garmin Mapsource and GPS Bable.  I then loaded the
>  waypoints into my 60CSx as custom POI's."
>
>  I have a Garmin Etrex and have been trying to get around the 500 point
> limit for a track. What you did seems to be the solution. I have the
> MapSource program and was able to filter my tracks to .5 mile like you did.
> However, I can't find an easy way to convert track points to waypoints. The
> only way I can see to do it is by clicking on each track point, one at a
> time, and making it a waypoint.  Is that what you did or do you have an easy
> way to take all the points in the track and convert them to waypoints - all
> at one time?
>
>  Appreciate you input here.
>  Thanks.
>  John.
>
>