bobh123

Note, if you are a member of Adventure Cycling Association, you get a 25-30% discount off of their awesome print maps. That would pay for the membership, plus you get other benefits of being a member and supporting the ACA. That might let you navigate without using your phone at all.

David78

I have an easily acessible top tube mounted bag that mounts to stem, top tube, and down tube. My available handlebar space is mostly taken up by my phone mount on the left and bike computer on the right. In this bag I plan to carry 4 states at a time worth of national geo road atlas maps. (About 8 pages) Family is mailing more state maps general delivery. The maps though are mostly for general route planning and staying near natl forests, etc... (Except for a few cities im mostly steering clear of urban areas and will opt for state parks, National parks, and natl forests instead. The turn by turn directions will be handled mostly on my phone provided I am in a service area. If not, then I can use the maps for more detailed route planning. I like a former posters idea of making index cards the night before of the next days ride route.

David78

I wasn't aware of that. Great advice Bob!

djb

do consider some sort of waterproof bag near the bars that will protect all the important stuff. Invariably you'll
ride through a whole day off rain, and it will eventually seep into everything. Ziplock bags and all that work ok, but a waterproof bag is just plain convenient.

Carbonfiberboy 

I guess I just don't understand the phone thing. Don't see the point. Why not one of the newer large screen Garmins and a tablet for planning, phone, and email? Use RideWithGPS to plot your routes, several days in advance if you like, download to the Garmin, all good. Long battery life, little bar real estate, no problems with heat or rain, turn by turn directions. My practice is to keep all my maps, routes, and ride records on micro-cards. I charge a battery stick or two to lengthen the time between needing a plug. I don't carry paper maps at all, nor need any resupply other than what I find on the road. No WiFi or cell needed other than every few days.

pdlamb

Did you ever consider you might be called an old fogey for advocating touring with a GPS?

fietsbob

Officially Old, I toured Europe & the British Isles , using large panel paper maps & as a result have a nice collection..

Their maps are so much better than the ones for driving your car , in the States ...

Although now ODOT has published a decent (free) bike map for the Oregon coast route, popular with cyclists from around the globe..

there is an online version, though not of the latest print edition..

Adventure cycling 's strip maps are formatted in panels, to be on top of your handle bar bag and were treated to be waterproof..

samples can be found on their website ...






...

David78

Largely it boils down to I own a phone. (Actually 2). I don't own a GPS. If I owned a GPS and a phone I might bring both. But I dont, and at some point during these planning stages I have to be selective with what I purchase. There is s lot that would be 'better' than what I have but I have limited financial resources. I agree that a GPS (which is designed for the express purpose of navigating and route finding) would be better at navigating and route finding than a phone.

ChrisFoCo

Hi David, I've been riding with my iPhone mounted on my handlebars for years now, so I'll tell you what worked for me.

1. Water resistance: In the old days before phones were water resistant, I would just remove it from the mount and put it into a pocket. Then, when they were "kinda a little resistant", I put a Quadlock "poncho" on it (clear plastic cover designed for phone). Nowadays, most late-model smartphones are water resistant enough to withstand even heavy rain. So now I just leave it.
2. Reducing glare: I've had this problem a bit in the past, but have never tried a glare-reducing screen film or anything like that. I just shield it from the light or wait for shade. Has never felt like a big problem to me.
3. Overheating: this is indeed a big one! In my experience, if you cover the phone so that it can't ventilate (for example, with a plastic bag or in a map case), that will cause it to overheat, especially in direct sunlight. But mounted on bars where the wind passes it seems to have prevented overheating on all of my iPhones (I don't have much Android experience.) So just don't cover it up, let the wind/air keep it cool.
4. Phone service: Offline maps with an app like Gaia, paper maps, etc. Again, though, it's a dying problem. If you really need comms for safety, for example, SPOT or Garmin have expensive devices that can give you a GPS-connected SOS. Personally, I've found that 'coverage maps' by carriers are wildly inaccurate. If I'm planning a tour, I try to not go too far out of service, but last year I broke down and bought a SPOT device for emergencies. Haven't had to use the SOS feature yet. 🤞

In addition to your questions, since I've started touring more I recently switched to a front dynamo hub, linked up to a Cinq Plug5 Plus USB top-cap charger, so that enables me to go as long as I like without having to charge my iPhone from a plug, and I can leave the screen on for mapping or Strava all day long if I wanted to, but I usually don't. I strongly recommend the Quad Lock mounting system... used it for years and years and it's always been great.

fietsbob

GPS & google maps, seem to not show terrain well ,
we had a truck driver following google maps, taking what looked like a shortcut, direct route,

only to find himself stuck jamming the trailer's loading dock bumper into the pavement,
on a hill with the sidewalk needing to be in stair-steps, and clearly marked "no trucks or buses" at the intersection.. at the bottom of that hill

Marine GPS shows where you are, but, does not show you where the bottom is... but recently printed navigational charts will ..

Carbonfiberboy 

Actually, just chuckling but there's not emoji for that, too bad. Anyway, that's why one always plots their routes on RWGPS. That is, if one is really interested in where one will be riding, rather than only the destination. It shows terrain perfectly (well, almost). There's even a Terrain feature in the maps. Paper sure doesn't show anything, if it even has the road or trail on it at all. I never use Google maps, even for driving.

Depends on the marine GPS. I've seen displays that showed the bottom in color gradations rather than numbers.

djb

I figure this is representative of a lot of people, myself included. When bike gps units became more common, I did look at them and consider them, but in the end, partly because I dont really tour that often (less so when bike gps were becoming more common and growing) I was hesitant to make a purchase of something that would only get used a few times a year if that, and being a bit concerned of spending 4-500 bucks on something that could easily become obsolete before I used it only a handful of times.
I also made the decision to learn more about smart phone based technology to help me in addition to maps, trying not to be too much of a luddite about new stuff--and also to use my financial resources for other stuff to put towards a trip.

indyfabz

Yeah. I don't have a GPS device but I still plot my routes using RWGPS. Like to see what I will be facing terrain-wise. I will then make papper cue sheets (or notes if there are only a few turns on a given day) and include info. like where the tops of long climbs are.

fietsbob

there is computer software with the charts in their memory ..


On land I am OK with talking to the locals , with the map I don't even have to share their language ..





...

Tourist in MSN

I have had pretty good luck with the routing on my Garmin GPS. It is a general recreation model, not specific to cycling. Model 64. When I tell it to go to a specific point, it asks me for a routing method, direct or straight line, automotive, motorcycle, bicycling, tour bicycling (this is more likely to take bike paths than the plain bicycling), mountain biking, pedestrian walking, hiking, mountaneering, and ATV/off roading. And when I pick tour cycling, it then asks me if I want to minimize time, distance or elevation.

When touring, if my route looks odd on the GPS map, like if it looks longer than I expected, I compare that routing to automotive routing. (If I am in a state where bicycles are prohibited from certain highways, I would not trust the automotive option very much.) Sometimes the automotive routing made more sense so I took that instead of tour bicycling routing.

But sometimes I liked the routing that the Android app Komoots or automotive routing on Maps.Me on my phone had, so took that instead of my Garmin GPS.

And sometimes if the local road on the paper map looks like it is better (for example, only half the distance), I might take that instead of the electronic routing.

I can't imagine why the depth of water would matter when you are bicyling. That said, a friend of mine complained after he submerged his dynohub when fording a stream, after which it had troubles. He said it was supposed to be waterproof, so he was upset about that.

djb

I dunno, but as someone who has always done my own hub maintenance, I would never intentionally submerge a hub, no matter what is said, and especially not with electronics involved.
Easy to say as it wasnt me fording a waterway, but I think I'd always be inclined to remove all my bags and do multiple trips to keep the bike up above water.
but i wasnt there...

Tourist in MSN

I fully agree. But, the guy that submerged his dynohub while fording a stream used to be a supervisor where I used to work. (I never worked in his program or location, we met after we were both retired.) So, when he does something amazingly stupid, I just chalk it up as one more example of an idiot supervisor having unrealistic expectations about resources at his disposal.

djb

that made me actually chuckle out loud.

Craptacular8

I can't speak for every nook and cranny, but most of the state has coverage, depending on carrier. ATT shows amazing coverage, real world experience, it works fairly well most places. Verizon has better coverage overall. TMobile...only in metro areas, and along the interstate.

njkayaker

Why do you keep spewing nonsense about things you clearly do not know much about?

???

People have been using digital topographical maps for years.

???

It's very unlikely that any paper maps the truck driver might have had would not have had enough elevation data. (It's not like truckers tend to use topo maps.) The paper maps people used to use tended to not have much detail.
​​​​​​
???

"Recently printed" navigation charts are printed from digital sources. And have been for years.

njkayaker

Don't rely on having cell network access. It might not be available when you need it.

There's no reason to rely on it. Alternatives are very good and cheap.

ChrisWagner

google maps unleashed -





AlpineQuest screens

njkayaker

The elevation data these programs use is readily available and free.

Some hills that you'd definitely notice on your bicycle can look pretty flat with the Google hill-shading.

DangerousDanR

We have toured Scotland and France depending on Google Maps and my phone (Moto G7 w/ Google Fi) for directions. I also have used that combo here in the US in several places. In all cases I have pre-loaded my map when I have WiFi access.

1) Water proof: I use an aluminum grabber mount and if it is raining I put the phone and case in a polyethylene (Baggie) bag. The touch works just fine.
2) Glare: I can cup my hand over the screen if the glare is really bad. Not sure if a polarized cover would work with my display or not. They can really screw up some displays. I just cup my hand over the display.
3) Heat: We rode in France with temperatures in the 90's. I have a solar charger and auxiliary battery pack to keep my phone going all day. No issues with heat. I have seen displays that would overheat from solar heating, but my Moto was just fine on a (for us) blistering hot French summer day.
4)Cellular coverage: Coverage in the Outer Hebrides two years ago was dismal at best. I loaded the entire region we were touring into Google Maps before we left the US. Not an issue. In rural France (Burgandy) I also downloaded the maps here in the US. No issues, except that the Google Bike routes were sometimes completely wacky. One put us on a single track mountain bike trail (and we were on a fully loaded touring tandem) when Euro Velo 6 was maybe 2 miles away.

In summary: my setup is a low to mid range phone on Google Fi with a $20 case, an aluminum phone mount. Mine is a Gub that is big enough to hold my phone in a case. I attached the mount with the headset preload bolt. I set the preload, tighten the stem clamp bolts, remove the stem preload bolt and mount the phone holder directly to the fork.

The advantage of my complete setup? It is cheap. Phone: $250, Mount: $20 Solar battery: $20 Baggie: $0.10 It has proven reliable. It is made of easily replaced parts. My GPS doubles as a phone and a camera.

downtube42

1) Waterproof phone case, waterproof phone, or a toptube bag with a clear waterproof phone section. Baggie & rubberband is an okay plan for a short ride, but not any multi-day. Baggies are not rugged. Plus in a surprise rain, covering the phone is just one more thing to deal with. Over that many days, you're going to forget it once. Finally, putting the phone IN a baggie, combined with a pinhole leak in the baggie, results in a bagful of phone and water.
2) If you have it aimed straight at your face, the hours/day when it's a problem will be minimal.
3) This, plus crashes, are IMO the two reasons to use a dedicated GPS rather than a phone for on-bar nav.
4) Verizon has the best coverage. No matter, you will have segments with no service. Offline maps are the key.