StephenH

Uh no, I'm not assuming that. But the question asked was specifically about cue sheets in addition to GPS, and not about other solutions to GPS problems. If you'd like to discuss every solution to every GPS problem, by all means, have at it, that could be informative for future reference, but I was only responding to the original question.

njkayaker

Sure you are. The thread was "about cuesheets being useful" and your answer was a list of problems with GPS units.

​​​​​​​The question was really whether the OP needed to provide cuesheets at all. It appears they plan to provide a gpx file regardless of whether they choose to provide cuesheets.

​If the problems you list are better addressed by solutions other than cuesheets, they aren't good reasons cuesheets are useful.

unterhausen

I don't have any gps problems that couldn't be solved with a 5 pound hammer.

I think they are getting better now that there is real competition.

My permanents seem to attract people that don't have gps'es. On my gravel 200k, I strongly recommend one, the forest service road signs are intentionally put back in the weeds so they aren't easy to see. Maybe it's so they aren't easy to run over, I don't know. But most of the people that have ridden that ride did it without a gps.

StephenH

"But an argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition, it isn't just the automatic naysaying of whatever the other person says." "Yes it is!" "No, it isn't!"

njkayaker

That's a good description of your approach.

Your list of GPS problems doesn't have much to do with the utility of cuesheets.

StephenH

I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to argue unless you pay.

Machka 

As time moves on, the number of people reading and using cue-sheets tends to diminish, replaced by people who have actually purchased and do use a GPS device : use it to guide them.
Hence my question to our wise community is:

*Is it still useful to prepare a cue-sheet ?
Yes

*Would it be sufficient to provide the participants with the GPS-device-readable .gpx file describing the route ?
If you did this, I would not be riding the event. Others might, but I wouldn't.

*Would it also be useful to provide the participants with*a marked-up map highlighting the route ?
If the route was simple. The Manitoba Randonneurs did this. In fact, when I went to the PBP the first time, I didn't have any idea how to read a cue sheet because all I'd ever used was a map. I learned how to follow a cue sheet during the PBP.

joewein

Wether you supply only a cue sheet or only a GPS track, either excludes potential participants. Supplying both will attract the largest number of participants.

The rando club I normally ride with publishes the route as a GPX file (and in other file formats) even before the signup period opens. That is a major reason why it's the club I normally ride with: Other clubs only provide a cue sheet, which is way too much of a hassle for me.

I navigate all brevets from a bread crumb trail shown on the GPS screen, from a GPX downloaded off the ride website. I bring a printout of the cue sheet with me, but mostly I only use it to confirm at what distance from the start the PCs are located and the names of the shops that serve as PCs. I never use the turn instructions. My backup is not paper but the phone, where I usually have access to Google My Maps (on Android). Paper is only the backup for the backup. My current USB battery has enough juice to keep the GPS unit and two phones charged for two days of riding (I carry a second phone mostly for pictures).

Spoonrobot 

I've only started using GPS in the past two years but I'll always take a cue sheet for events. I hate relying on my phone for navigation and although my GPS devices have been perfectly reliable the weight/benefit ratio for taking a cue sheet I don't end up using is overwhelmingly positive.

I'll often take the provided cue sheet and use it to research the route while creating my own version in RidewithGPS. This also helps me learn about the general areas I'll be traveling through and if there are any local points of interest to be aware of.

unterhausen

I need to practice downloading the google maps for the area I'm riding through. I decided to dnf a 600k in May, and there was no cell service so I couldn't get directions and couldn't figure it out for myself. Really would have been nice to have a map, I'm pretty sure it would have saved me the $50 I ended up spending on an Uber when I finally made it to civilization.

njkayaker

The Google map app lets you download areas but it does routing offline (afaik). If that's the case, it wouldn't have helped you.

There are phone apps that work very well for this. Maps.me (free) and Galileo Offline Maps (you need to really get the paid version).

These let you download maps by state. You can do this at any time. This might be better than using Google because it's more direct.

Both recently added off-line routing.

You can also load the route to these.

njkayaker

This is the thing that the OP and other posters didn't get.

If you use a route-planner, like RWGPS, that also produces a cuesheet, it's easy to produce a cuesheet. The cuesheet RWGPS is more than sufficient to keep in a pocket as a backup.

Try another app (maps.me or galileo offline maps). These more without a cell network and let you load the route.

People keep talking about using the cuesheet for a backup for the GPS but there are better backups.

Salubrious

I've been riding the Tour Divide for the last three years.

Its often in the middle of nowhere that you have to make a crucial turn. Racers often make mistakes, so you can't rely on where other tracks go- they will go in all directions.

A good gps deals with a lot of this- you can zoom in and easily find your way. I have an Edge 1000 with original firmware and its a bit buggy but it works nonetheless. On my first trip I brought the cue sheets and mostly used the Garmin to track miles. That sucks because in no time you can be fatigued enough that keeping track of the miles in your head can be challenging. The second year I brought the maps but rarely used them. This last year I left the maps at home (I knew most of the route)- other riders had them, but the saying on the TDR is 'if in doubt, follow the blue line'. Places like the descent into Park Lake instead of taking the road to the Lava Mountain Trail do need some close attention. You think you're at the pass and you totally aren't!

The gpx file usually becomes available only a few days or maybe two weeks prior to the Grand Depart. The thing is, they have to scope out conditions. For example, last year and the year before an important bridge was out in the Flathead Valley, so there was a notorious reroute called Koko Claims. Its not on the official maps. I think cue sheets were available online. But many riders didn't use them. Some reroutes occur during the race due to forest fires. That was an on-going thing in the Gila this year. For that, cue sheets were put online and emailed to racers.

Space is at a premium on an unsupported ultra-endurance race like the TDR. Maps and cue sheets take up room, and the phone is handy if for no other reason to take photos. Many riders use some form of dyno hub, but I've found that a 12amp solar charged power source does the job nicely- I can recharge the GPS while riding (its battery is only good for about 10 hours or so). With the phone on airplane mode, its battery will go all week.

So I bring connectors for charging; the solar battery has dual outputs, handy if one is overcome by dirt and I have spare connectors. So the dead battery thing isn't; I can recharge the GPS at least 15 times off of one charge of the solar battery and its getting recharged all the time. I do carry a spare and much smaller battery charger that also has dual USB ports.

I've seen cue sheets be wrong- one had Holland Lake off by 15 miles, which sucked. The GPS is **far** more reliable! I'm not against cue sheets, just more likely to rely on the GPS despite my on-going love hate thing with it (this year I'll probably use the Etrex30 as it doesn't have that stupid touch screen that activates when its raining ).

We pretty well have to have a Spot or Delorme to be seen on Trackleaders so like it or not the GPS is there. It would be cool if someone could build a GPS that did the blue dot thing while also accepting really larger (10,000 waypoint) gpx files... and rechargable batteries. I'm dreaming of course...

The bottom line is right now there are no good answers; that could be really different in just a couple of years.

Michelangelo

As far as 10,000 waypoints are concerned, I have no idea, but for rechargeable batteries and external memory for hosting openstreetmaps (or IGN in France) ? Did you check the TwoNav anima+

<https://www.twonav.com/en/gps/twonav-anima-plus> ?

Michelangelo

Machka, rm -rf, antimonysarah, nijkayaker, StephenH, unterhausen, joewin, spoonrobot and salubrious, thanks !!!

It appears to me my initial post resisted njkayaker socratic questioning to StephenH.

Thank you all for accepting my questions and magnificently succeeding in producing useful suggestions. To rewrite what some of you wrote beautifully:

Q: "Is it still useful to provide a cue-sheet ?

A: Yes.

(thank you Machka, living suspended under the earth does not seem to affect your judgement)

Q: To which extent is it useful to riders ?

A: Well... Based on your replies, it appears it mostly depends on the rider and to a lesser extent on the cue-sheet design.

Q: Depend on the rider ?

A: Some ignore the cue-sheets (my case, typically);

A: Some take the printed cue-sheet and stuff it in their pocket as back-up;

A: Some place their cue-sheet on the top most visible part of their handlebar pannier to be their primary direction tool;

A: Some will even rewrite the cue-sheet to their liking and then place it on their handlebar pannier as their primary direction tool.

Q: Depend on the cue-sheet design ?

A: Poorly designed cue-sheets are dismissed. Thanks to rm -rf suggestion, I realised the RidewithGPS model (in English, a language not in customary use in France) seems quite perfect: Three [necessary and sufficient] fields: Total distance; lap distance; and Written Description (to include what is actually visible from the bike when visible markers and distance call for action).

A: In view of the variability of uses, the cue-sheet should be severable from the rest of the documents issued by the organizer, it seems acceptable to only provide it by internet.

A: Nevertheless, under pouring rain, a cue-sheet printed with a laser printer will be more resilient than a cue-sheet printed by the rider at home on an ink-jet printer.

A: The font used in the cue-sheet depend on use and eyesight of the rider, who often ride without corrective lenses and the young, who may enjoy a better eyesight, seem to dismiss the use of cue-sheets. So, big fonts seem to be necessary to some and acceptable to all cue-sheet users : There seems to exist no exception to using big fonts.

Thanks. We will remember, when we get prepared for our 23rd june event.

kingston 

Couple more comments on cue sheet design
I like the tulip diagrams that they use on cue sheets for gravel rides, but probably not necessary for a brevet and quite a bit more effort to prepare. Whatever format you use, I recommend having someone pre-ride the course using just the cue sheet and edit it along the way to make sure it’s usable for someone navigating that way. The cue sheets exported from the software are a good start, but they always need a few edits for accuracy or clarity.

Just be sure to publicize it well in advance if you’re not providing printed cue-sheets and have a few cue sheets printed for the people who don’t have GPS and didn’t come prepared with a printed copy.

I suppose this could be an issue, but I’ve never had a problem with it. With a map case or a ziploc and a cue clip, the cue-sheet stays dry enough to be usable in even the heaviest downpour in my experience, especially if the cue-sheet is formatted with a full segment in one view so I only have to take it out to turn the page at the controls.

Just don’t make the font too big. While I don’t rely solely on the cue sheet anymore, I do like to have it visible all the time, and if the font is too big, I have to stop in between controls to flip the cue-sheet. Not a huge deal, but a little annoying. OTOH, don’t make it too small so our old eyes can’t see it. I’ve always thought a nice option would be to provide an un-formatted cue-sheet in a spreadsheet format so people could use whatever font size works best for them.

Salubrious

The Anima+ does not support gpx files nor has satellite tracking. Neither does it support 10,000 waypoints (the size of the gpx file for the Tour Divide).

Racers on the Tour Divide are not competitive without a GPS, FWIW. Its very easy to make a wrong turn and make an enormous descent, only to find you are off course and have to climb back up 3000 feet. Heck, that's easy enough to do even if you have a GPS, but you're far less likely to go all the way down the mountain before you figure it out. I would imagine that with any ultra-endurance race this is the case.

pdlamb

Such as??

And if this is what you're thinking, no, I don't see using GPS app on a smart phone as different from using two GPSs of different models or brands.

clasher

Almost everyone these days is carrying a smartphone so they might as well just use what they are already carrying instead of getting another gps. Even someone without a smartphone would likely be better off buying a cheap/used smartphone as a backup instead of another gps because the phone is useful for taking pictures and with maps.me or another offline map it's way easier to re-route on the phone than a gps since you can have more screen... if I didn't have gps and was still using cue-sheet-only I'd use my phone as the backup.

njkayaker

People are (typically) already carrying the phone (one difference!). It doesn't take much effort to be able to use it as a backup to the GPS.

Carrying a second GPS as a backup is not an unreasonable option but it's more expensive (another difference!).

Even with multiple GPS, being able to use the phone for maps is useful. Smartphones are useful for reviewing maps (and your location) because they have better screens and are faster than a dedicated GPS (yet another difference!).

If you don't use a GPS (as some might prefer) but are carrying a smartphone, the smartphone is useful if you go off the cuesheet (which happens frequently). Especially, if one has access to the route file.