I've got several devices with GPS in them; some cameras, and a 7 inch Huawei T3 tablet that I use for flying a DJI drone. I've got no need for a smartphone, as it would be a distraction while working, have poor battery life, and not pull in signal as well as my dumbphone.
My smart phone is better at picking up signal than any dumbphone I've ever had. Largely because it has 2 sims in it, one of which is always roaming, which means it picks up what ever signal it can get. It also supports 2G, 2.5G, 3G, 3.5G, and 4G increasing the odds of having some form of signal.
While filming in controls it's noticeable that an ever-increasing number of riders have their faces illuminated by the glow of their phones.
Letting family know they made it to the control safely, updating twitter/instagram (really good for encouraging people to join future rides), checking the route to the next control...
Pictures and footage are taken in the wide-angle format, with the lurid colours of phone cameras, and records of rides are written on phones.
I'm a camera snob, I've had to accept that I can't reasonably carry my SLR on audaxes, so have compromised with a Olympus TG5 in my back pocket, it's got a 100mm (equiv) zoom, and shoots raw. Tho admittedly a lot of the shots are shot fully open, one handed as I ride along...
The assumptions are that nearly everyone has a smartphone, and that anyone who doesn't is Luddite. My view is that smartphones tend to narrow people's range of perspectives. Literally, in that you can't get telephoto shots as standard, and metaphorically, as they are pretty limited as a means of expression. There's also a practical reason for my not using them. If you've got vibration whitefinger, touch screens are very unreliable.
Smart phones move on. Modern smart phones released in the last year or so can have really good zooms. At least if the adverts I see at the tram stop are to be believed.
I agree with you re the touch screen UI being sub optimal.
So learning the route by tracing a routesheet on a map, filming the event on cameras controlled by buttons and switches, remembering what happened, and writing it up later on a keyboard, were my favoured methods. That way of working is becoming outmoded. Its value is that it produces a result which evokes a ride 10, 15 or 20 years later, whereas smartphone/facebook culture has a time-span measured in hours, or days if you are lucky.
I'm writing an article about RatN. Do you know what I'm using as my source notes? Aside from the photos I took (largely on the TG5 mentioned above), but it's my tweets. They provide notes on what I was doing, where, and more importantly, my emotional state at the time.
The ephemeral nature of digital culture isn't something that the young are going to worry about, until they want to look back at what they did, and don't have any hard copy.
This is also going to bite historians too...
It was only as the final few riders were coming through the control that it occurred to me how many were clearly using route sheets as their sole navigation method.
I should have started taking photos sooner...
<snip>
Confirmation bias. You spotted them because you'd had this thread. How many were using Wahoo devices?
As a user of several forums, this one does sometimes feel like there's an "inside group" who've known each other IRL for many years so could this be a barrier to setting up events on here? I'm sure it isn't intentional, just my two pence.
Agreed. I've been round here for a number of years, and I don't feel part of that inside group, people talk about others doing rides, that clearly a number of people know of, but I've no idea who they are talking about. It's not a major issue to me, I'm used to being in the outgroup, but I can imagine others don't like it.
I think yacf is brilliant, and I'm very thankful for it's existence.
I'm not a heavy user - some sections of the forum I frequent a lot and others barely at all.
But the facility and ease to go back and revisit a thread about a ride I may have done or a technical issue I might be interested in [or a thread about GPX 
] is so easy and practical to navigate, it's a joy. Easy to find - easy to catch up on.
facebook does my head in - the whole stream of consciousness thing.....I can do a few minutes then I've had enough.....I'm out of there.
long live yacf.
Agreed. I've never had a facebook account, but I've used others, and the UI made absolutely no bloody sense.
Yacf is brilliant, even if I don't get a lot of the injokes and references, even if everyone thinks I'm crazy, and no doubt look at threads and think "Oh bloody hell, what windmill is she tilting at this time?".
My only complaint is the search function isn't great, but that's what "site:yacf.co.uk" is for on google...
I have entered a Welsh 200 which doesn't have a gps file. It took me just over half an hour to create one from the routesheet; a few deductions needed where instructions were vague but named places gave the necessary clue. No fuss and hardly any bother.
I've just entered the Heelen 200 this weekend. There's a GPS provided, I loaded it in seconds, then spent the rest of the time saved replying to this thread...
I've done a quick exercise, went on to the AUK calendar and filtered all 200km rides in Wales for the next 4 months, this gives 4 200km rides which do not have a GPX icon next to them. I opened each one, selected the event name and then right clicked to "Search Google For..." Each time the 2nd hit on Google was for a RideWithGPS route!
The first 3 actually do have a GPX on the ride details page but the last one "Barmouth Boulevard" does not, but again, 2nd hit on Google: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/5212762 and 4th result is a link to YACF discussion on the route...
Pistyll Packing Momma
Ferryside Fish Foray
Dr. Foster's Summer Saunter
Barmouth Boulevard
Seems there is already a nice database in existence: Google 
If all else fails, searching (or starting) a thread on here might provoke someone providing a GPX file where the org hasn't included on in the event entry page... (assuming they don't just email one out anyway)
The problem with this is that you run into the issues that the route is usually last years ride, That may not take into account the fact someone dug up Lincolnshire, or that there's a new road somewhere...
How can you trust a 3rd party GPX?
I've never had any cycling technology, the only thing on my handlebars is handlebar tape & a paper route sheet, I find using a route sheet fun & more informative, you get to remember street names & yes you sometimes take the wrong turn but so what, it may mean you only get 55 minutes in the café instead of an hour & a half. I rode a dozen or so Randonees in the mid 80's out of Doncaster with Sheila, Fliss Beard & Noel, I only did one season because I was racing in those days, I remember those rides with great affection & nostalgia has gotten the better of me, it was a golden period for me & I sort of want it back, I'm now back on a steel bike with a Turbo saddle but I do have Ergo's, I don't want Audax to be too easy.
I'd rant here about technology being more than electronics, but it seems Kim beat me to it!
That's usually my response when some whippet-thin person riding a carbon fibre bike, aero wheels, tubeless 23mm tyres, no mudguards, no luggage, etc. asks me why I'm riding my Pashley Guv'nor or Roadster.
I'm so glad you rode RatN, you made my steel bike with it's 1.4kg lock look light... :p
... bicycle is surely one of humankind's greatest technological achievements. Probably right up there with sewers in terms of its ability to improve people's quality of life...
I'd add Germ theory to this list.
Also the technology that goes into a steel frame is really rather impressive...
I understand a number of people successfully audax with the "follow my mate" method - particularly those on their first couple of rides.
I've had a few people following me around audaxes (without asking), because their navigation approach has failed (broken garmins in some cases, friend rode off in others).
Plus of course a tracklog can be fabricated using software, or can be recorded in a car - for the finish controller or organiser,
Oh just route the route down some sustrans infrastructure, the combo of silly gates and the like will filter out the cars :p
Sorry for going quiet on this thread for a while, life got in the way...
J
