Piece of String event - August 2016

[Aunt Maud]

Plus what if for no fault of CET's a track doesn't work on a particularly difficult riders GPS, the rider gets lost and CET gets the blame.

Same as if a rider can't follow the routesheet and gets lost, I'd imagine.  Except the tech-loving riders are statistically more likely to bitch about it on the internet afterwards.

Not really, because if the rout sheet was correct then it's clearly the riders fault. Proving the GPX track (if that's what it was) was correct for the riders GPS device and didn't contain some kind of GPS corrupting bug is a different matter. There was a rider on HtW at the weekend who reckoned the downloaded GPX file somehow caused his GPS to crash.

Anyway, I was wondering what kind of ride distance we were talking about. Is it up to 200km's or way above that in the 600+ bracket ?

[Kim]

I don't know about anyone else, but when I publish a GPX of a ride, it's on an "as-is, seems to work okay in my software" basis.  I certainly wouldn't guarantee its suitability for a specific device, especially one I haven't got access to for testing.

Unlike 'correctness' of a routsheet (which is always going to be subject to interpretation of what you see on the ground), valid XML is relatively easy to verify, as is the integrity of downloads.  But the suitability or stability of some third-party closed-source software/hardware combination....you're on your own.

I certainly wouldn't expect an organiser to do anything more than that.  GPS routes are a nice to have.  Much like a well-written routesheet.  Or a map.  Or anything else that's above and beyond a list of control locations.

[CrazyEnglishTriathlete]

Plus what if for no fault of CET's a track doesn't work on a particularly difficult riders GPS, the rider gets lost and CET gets the blame.

Same as if a rider can't follow the routesheet and gets lost, I'd imagine.  Except the tech-loving riders are statistically more likely to bitch about it on the internet afterwards.

Not really, because if the rout sheet was correct then it's clearly the riders fault. Proving the GPX track (if that's what it was) was correct for the riders GPS device and didn't contain some kind of GPS corrupting bug is a different matter. There was a rider on HtW at the weekend who reckoned the downloaded GPX file somehow caused his GPS to crash.

Anyway, I was wondering what kind of ride distance we were talking about. Is it up to 200km's or way above that in the 600+ bracket ?

Guidance from AUK is that it has to be fixed time or fixed distance, so I have offered a fix time with an unknown maximum distance, which means that it will be somewhere between 500km and 1000km and I won't be drawn on that.  Some of the stages will have controls on them but the longest stage will max out at about 160km.

I will probably be able to generate around 30 GPX files for possible routes - these are my local roads and Hampshire/Berkshire/etc are well stocked with little lanes that can be joined up so it shouldn't be too hard to built 30 possible routes, which would leave plenty enough room for red herrings, one or two of which will be deliberately off-putting (it is possible to get some wicked AAA with careful drawing of control points) to put off those who download and memorise everything    The other advantage is, that if the event proves successful and is repeated, I have plenty of new routes to choose from.

[Aunt Maud]

Sounds like a nice distance CET. If you want any help drawing up the dummy tracks let me know.