Have spent some more time playing around with the Quo mapping software designing the route for the TGO Challenge, I now know that the whole route fits on 29 A4 sheets of paper.
The Quo maps I have are at the 1:50 scale but the software allows the maps to be printed out at almost any scale. I did try printing at 1:25 which give the best detail but only allows a 7x6 km square map, which mean more pages. Printing at 1:50 gives the lease number but is nearly impossible for me to see without glasses, it would mean having to put them on to map read then take off to see where I was then going, which in a pain and in bad weather a complete hassle.
So to give me the best option of scale I can see without glasses and not have to many pages; I have gone for 1:30 scale, which gives the 29 sheets of A4, but by printing double sided is only actually 15 sheets of paper.
But I worked out a way to make this even less sheets of paper; in fact only 8 by printing them on A3 paper, I can get 4 maps to one A3 sheet.
The next step is how waterproof the printed maps will be; printing on standard paper is a no-no as one drop of water and the maps will be ruined. I know that you can buy waterproof papers (which are expensive) to print on but I'm sure that you also need to have waterproof inks to make this work properly.
I have some maps printed using a high end electrophotography machine and will do some tests to see how good they are in the wet. I don't expect them to be fully waterproof but to be better than the ones printing on a normal printer.
As I'm taking a low level route; I'm sure that having the digital print out instead of 'proper' maps will work out O.K. although I will probably get and take the Havery's Cairngorms & Lochnagar British Mountain map incase I decide to take a detour in the Cairngorms.
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
Sunday, 22 November 2009
Part One Complete
I've just completed part one of the start of my TGO Challenge; and that is getting the route sorted out.
As a first timer; it is suggested that you do a low level route, so I have kept to this and made the route as such.
I did have two starting points but have gone with the one that I feel is the easier start for me, although it doesn't seem that easy to get to.
As usual I've used digital maps to plan the route but this time using a different software package namely Quo. I went with this one as I needed to update the two other software packages I already had, Anquet and Fugawi both of these are a long way out of date.
To update either of these two worked out quite expensive, but Quo allows you to buy 25K tiles and the cost of buying these for the route I had, worked out to less than £10.
After using Quo for a couple of weeks, it turn out to be a very easy program to use, much easier than both Anquet and Fugawi. The printing of the actual maps is much better and shows exactly what part and what scale you are printing at; unlike Fugawi.
The only problem I have had with the route is working out the map numbers to include on the route sheet, as digital maps don't have this infomation in/on them and to be honest I have never used map number since going digital.
Next thing is to send the route off for vetting and find out if there is anything wrong with it.
As a first timer; it is suggested that you do a low level route, so I have kept to this and made the route as such.
I did have two starting points but have gone with the one that I feel is the easier start for me, although it doesn't seem that easy to get to.
As usual I've used digital maps to plan the route but this time using a different software package namely Quo. I went with this one as I needed to update the two other software packages I already had, Anquet and Fugawi both of these are a long way out of date.
To update either of these two worked out quite expensive, but Quo allows you to buy 25K tiles and the cost of buying these for the route I had, worked out to less than £10.
After using Quo for a couple of weeks, it turn out to be a very easy program to use, much easier than both Anquet and Fugawi. The printing of the actual maps is much better and shows exactly what part and what scale you are printing at; unlike Fugawi.
The only problem I have had with the route is working out the map numbers to include on the route sheet, as digital maps don't have this infomation in/on them and to be honest I have never used map number since going digital.
Next thing is to send the route off for vetting and find out if there is anything wrong with it.
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
TGO Challenge 2010
Darren phoned me today at lunch-time and left a message on my voicemail along the lines of 'check your email; they're sending out emails at the moment'.
Its been a long afternoon; as I can't access my email at work.
My application has been successful, so I'm on next year's TGO Challenge. GULP!
Its been a long afternoon; as I can't access my email at work.
My application has been successful, so I'm on next year's TGO Challenge. GULP!
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