Bike MS Tour De Vine June 14-15, 2014; AARC Public Service Event

AARC is once again providing communications support for the Bike MS Tour De Vine (formerly known as the MS-150) which is a two day bike ride on Saturday June 14 and Sunday June 15. AARC has supported this event for decades.

More details below the fold.

All Routes begin and end at Pollak Vineyards, 330 Newtown Road Greenwood, VA 22943. geo:38.035099,-78.791656

Website:
http://main.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR/Bike/VABBikeEvents?pg=entry&fr_id=22886

This is two days of bike rides not a ride which lasts two days and there are century rides but no 150 mile ride (though perhaps you can do two rides that add up to 150). And there is no metric century ride (unlike the similarly named tour de valley).

Repeaters

The plan is to use the linked 146.760, 146.895, and 146.925 repeaters. Even so, there will be dead spots.

Cue Sheets

Please note that the century rides cue sheets don’t start at zero; apparently you follow the 75 mile cue sheet until you get to the initial waypoint on the 100 mile ride. There are 25/50/75/100 mile routes on saturday and different 25/50/75/100 mile routes on sunday.

Cue Sheets which were previously posted here are out of date.

UPDATE: final cue sheet in XLS format: https://www.albemarleradio.org/sites/default/files/TDV20140611-Final.xls

Printable Map

Producing a printable map is a difficult undertaking. Here is a printout from the GIS data below, made by producing a google earth window 4 times the size of my monitor (trick using multiple desktops in linux) and overlaying on top of mapnik data using the ge-map-overlays.appspot.com overlays and then using google earth’s built in print. Earth’s printing is raster based so producing a supersized window is a way to up the resolution. The text font leaves much to be desired and streets (other than major highways) are not labelled (map is 50 miles wide, street names do not appear at this scale). The stuff south of the start/finish line is Day 1, and north is Day 2.

https://www.albemarleradio.org/sites/default/files/TDV2014_composite_test2_over_mapnik2.pdf

Rest Stop Coordinates

Day 1:

Day2

(Geographic Information System) GIS Data

The latest version of the routes is given by the 8 web links below. You can download KML files from those map pages. However, these are not GPS friendly or suitable for any other non-superficial use because they do not trace the route as ridden. They are a big improvement on previous data which defined a 25 mile loop plus 50 mile addon loop, plus a 75 mile addon to the 50 mile, plus a 100 mile addon to the 75 mile and didn’t even necessarily traverse the loops in the correct direction. However, these tracks fail to return to the starting line once they self intersect. I am working on converting these to proper routes.

http://www.MapFab.com/map/Ixw/TDV2014-1-25
http://www.MapFab.com/map/Ix0/TDV2014-1-50
http://www.MapFab.com/map/Ix4/TDV2014-1-75
http://www.MapFab.com/map/Ix8/TDV2014-1-100

http://www.MapFab.com/map/Ixg/TDV2014-2-25
http://www.MapFab.com/map/Ixk/TDV2014-2-50
http://www.MapFab.com/map/Ixo/TDV2014-2-75
http://www.MapFab.com/map/Ixs/TDV2014-2-100

Data for the full century rides both days, with rest stops and added directional arrows. Note that route still skips the jog into Stinson winery rest stop on the inbound leg and this isn’t easy to correct as it excites bugs. Separate tracks for 25/50/75 are missing.
This is the file to play with in google earth.
https://www.albemarleradio.org/sites/default/files/TDV2014_composite_test2.kml
And a google maps version:
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=https://www.albemarleradio.org/sites/default/files/TDV2014_composite_test2.kml

GPS use

While any GPS is better than none, the GPS units you may own may be crippled. This can cause some problems if you attempt to use them for navigation as a rider in an event and there can be even more trouble for support vehicles which may leave and reenter the course, dispatch to random places on the course, etc.

Garmin GPSes communicate with computers in one of several ways over USB. Some use the proprietary garmin serial protocol over USB or RS-232 cables; gpsbabel is one program which can communicate with those. Others use USB Mass Storage Mode which makes the GPS look like a raw disk drive to your PC; the PC and the GPS unit cannot use the storage at the same time. Some use Media Transfer Protocol, an extension of the picture transfer protocol, which is a file, rather than disk, oriented protocol used on cameras, mp3 players, phones, etc. Support for MTP on desktops is still a bit sketchy. On garmin units, GPX files are typically downloaded to GARMIN/GPX directory on the device.

Many car GPS units do not support downloaded “Routes”. Even if they do, they may have issues if you miss, or appear to miss, a waypoint due to GPS position error, lane position, a slight detour, etc. Some may have issues resuming a route at some point other than the starting point after taking a detour or being dispatched. Some have trouble with multiple laps over the same course. And some have trouble traversing a route in the reverse direction (as I was directed to do extensively on a previous bike event). Also some older units have trouble entering or displaying lattitude and longitude.

Bicycle and trail GPS units may handle downloaded routes much better, but may know very little about other roads though they may have major US highways. The Bike units may even understand laps. However, these units were made for riders, not support vehicles.

• Some of the higher end Car GPS models do at least have some ability to use downloaded routes
• One trick is to backup your Current.GPX file (which may contain your favorites and GPS track) and replace it with a version that contains the desired route as if it was your track. Then it will show the route as if you had driven it (if you have turned on the option to display your track). It will not issue turn by turn directions, doesn’t know which direction you should go along the route, and will also display any detours you might have made.
• Another trick is to put a sufficient number of waypoints on the GPS and navigate from waypoint to waypoint. It can help if those are in formats such as MM000.00 which will sort alphanumerically in the right order. Your GPS may let you insert waypoints as via points if you select them as destinations in the usual manner but in reverse order and select “add as via” when asked. A problem is that if you use via points that are too far apart, your GPS will take shortcuts. You need to choose via points carefully.
• You can also tap points on the map to navigate to them, though you will need to zoom in

In the long run, smartphones may be a better option because you can load different software. However, many smartphone GPS apps still have the same types of limitations that car ones do and worse, many will not work without a cellular connection to download map data. On android: look at osmand (put GPX in osmand/tracks/ directory), cue sheets, and mapmyride. (haven’t had much chance to test). You need a car mount. iOttie mounts have a special sticky gel pad to help the stick much better; you can also buy a similar pad on ebay under the name “suction cup buddy” for use with other mounts. The iOttie mounts are limited in left/right pan flexibility.

Propagation Study

Depends on fixing the GIS data.

Day 1, 100 mile route. Note that the last leg, which is the first leg (6.7miles) in reverse, is missing. 4.3 hours computing time
PDF: https://www.albemarleradio.org/sites/default/files/tdv2014-1-100_proppath.pdf
CSV: https://www.albemarleradio.org/sites/default/files/TDV2014-1-100.csv

Day 2, 100 mile route. Note that the last leg, which is the first leg (6.7miles) in reverse, is missing. 4.9 hours computing time.
https://www.albemarleradio.org/sites/default/files/tdv2014-2-100_proppath_0.pdf
https://www.albemarleradio.org/sites/default/files/TDV2014-2-100_0.csv