I don’t understand Courses
Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2023 2:12 pm
I don’t really understand the concept of courses.
My understanding was, that a Route is a navigation between two or more points and the GPS selects the best path between those points given certain parameters (automotive, bike, exclusions, …).
A Course I thought is supposed to be a navigation along a selected path whereas the path is defined by me on a map.
So, yesterday, I created a 20 mile counter-clockwise course in Garmin Explore that starts and ends at my home and pretty much makes an almost perfect circle. I then synced the course with the device where it appeared under “Course Planner”
My setup is a GPSMAP 66s with the original Garmin Cycle Map on the device. “Activity” was set to “Tour Cycling” and “Course Navigation” to “Roads and Trails”.
Now my expectation was that the GPS would guide me along the course on and along the defined path.
But no. First of all, after starting to navigate the course, the GPS calculated the course as expected on the device and then immediately told me that I have arrived at my destination and stopped navigation. Repeat. Same result. Ok, so apparently I can’t start a circle course unless I have already started. So I biked for a minute and started the course navigation again. What now happened for the first half of my circle course was, that the GPS told me constantly to make a u-turn to get back home. For the second half of the circle, the GPS constantly tried to guide me off the defined corse (a cycle path) onto a main road and straight back home.
So, as far as I see it, course navigation on the GPSMAP is completely useless as internally, the device only cares about the final map-point and - like a Route - tries to get you there as fast as possible.
Anybody know how to solve this or is this just what it is?
I know that I can set “Course Navigation” to “Direct Path” and then the selected course gets a thick pink line but lacks the navigation features.
My understanding was, that a Route is a navigation between two or more points and the GPS selects the best path between those points given certain parameters (automotive, bike, exclusions, …).
A Course I thought is supposed to be a navigation along a selected path whereas the path is defined by me on a map.
So, yesterday, I created a 20 mile counter-clockwise course in Garmin Explore that starts and ends at my home and pretty much makes an almost perfect circle. I then synced the course with the device where it appeared under “Course Planner”
My setup is a GPSMAP 66s with the original Garmin Cycle Map on the device. “Activity” was set to “Tour Cycling” and “Course Navigation” to “Roads and Trails”.
Now my expectation was that the GPS would guide me along the course on and along the defined path.
But no. First of all, after starting to navigate the course, the GPS calculated the course as expected on the device and then immediately told me that I have arrived at my destination and stopped navigation. Repeat. Same result. Ok, so apparently I can’t start a circle course unless I have already started. So I biked for a minute and started the course navigation again. What now happened for the first half of my circle course was, that the GPS told me constantly to make a u-turn to get back home. For the second half of the circle, the GPS constantly tried to guide me off the defined corse (a cycle path) onto a main road and straight back home.
So, as far as I see it, course navigation on the GPSMAP is completely useless as internally, the device only cares about the final map-point and - like a Route - tries to get you there as fast as possible.
Anybody know how to solve this or is this just what it is?
I know that I can set “Course Navigation” to “Direct Path” and then the selected course gets a thick pink line but lacks the navigation features.