Map holder

[Greenbank]

Ditto.

I've not had many problems with losing satellite lock on my older Etrex, once in a steep-sided valley, and a couple of times on heavily-wooded roads. It does sometimes take a few minutes to lock on though.

The H versions can often be less accurate when used for cycling in built up areas as they tend to get confused more easily by picking up the reflections off buildings that the non-H versions don't.

Somewhere I had a comparison of a tracklog from my eTrex and a friend's high-sensitivity Legend HCx on a ride up to Cambridge. Mine stuck to the road pretty faithfully the entire way, his did too, except passing through the edge of the City (Bishopsgate and past Liverpool St station) where there were lots of tall buildings.

I've only had a couple of times where I've lost lock with the eTrex and, like you, they've been heavily wooded roads or steep walled gorges. Never really a problem as these aren't the places where there are junctions (where I'd need it to know where it was in order for it to tell me what to do!).

 

[SheilaH]

I haven't had any problems with mine (I use a bog standard yellow eTrex too) and I've used it for 5000km of events so far. I don't see why you need to fart around with the GPS. Turn it on in advance (so that it gets a lock), select right route, follow. 20 seconds at most. At the half way control it's another 10 seconds to switch to the return route.

I've done a 600 on a pair of 2700mAh rechargables and there was still life left in it. On the recent DIY rides up to Edinburgh (done as a 300, 200, 200 on consecutive days) the batteries lasted until the evening of day 2. 20 seconds to change them and I was off again. On long rides I'll change the batteries whilst I'm stopped at a control, that way I'm not wasting any time doing it.

I program mine with routes rather than tracks, that makes it work just like a routesheet. One routepoint per routesheet instruction,and labelled with the instruction (and a number to make it unique, all within 6 characters), i.e.

"01 L" - left
"02 R" - right
"03 SOX" - straight on at crossroads
"04 E3" - exit 3 of roundabout
"05 CTL" - control

This was my day 2 of London-Edinburgh from Thorne to Alston in just 81 route points:-

http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/261851

Luckily I have a good memory and I can remember the snippets of routesheet instructions in/around the controls, also what to do when leaving a control. A quick check on the routesheet whilst at the control helps too.

Also, there's no need to buy Tracklogs, Memory Map, or any other mapping software for the computer. I just create my routes in bikely, download them as GPX files, manually convert them from tracks to routes using a text editor, manually split them at appropriate places if they're too long (max 120 points per route) or a loop (otherwise it'll start off pointing you back towards the finish), then use a simple program to transfer them to the GPS.

It takes about an hour in total to go from routesheet to programmed GPS (for a 300km ride) which also helps me get an idea of the places and terrain that I'll be riding through as I'm looking at the map. Some are easier, the Elenith took less than 30 minutes to plot as it has only got 74 points.

I'll be using my eTrex for LEL (I've already done the route one way in 3 days and the GPS worked flawlessly). I'll just dump some rechargables in the bagdrops and carry some spares with me.

Clipping a route sheet into my mapholder takes 10 seconds

..... but I take your points. You are undoubtedly more technical proficient than me, I have no idea how to edit a gpx file, perhaps if I did I'd be more willing to use the gps. I think you probably enjoy the process as much as the end result, whereas I view it as a pain in the @rse.