Map holder.
 

Hi guys,
I'm trying to weigh up the pros and cons of constructing a map holder for my bike.

What im thinking is getting an A5 sized aluminium clipboard and fixing it to the cross brace on the handlebars. Not sure how i would fix it, i'll pop to B&Q and see what i can find.
Do you think it would vibrate too much? Or get in the way?

I don't like tank mounting maps as it takes too long to look down at them, and i think mounting it above the instruments would be too distracting.

If it works it could be a very cheap alternative to a Satnav!!

What do you think?!?

You will probably find it a PIA to mount without it fouling sight or the clocks or similar but i still like maps too. One of the best tips is to have a good look at your route 1st and sort a symbol description in a bold pen. An A5 map may not give you enough visuals.

I find GPS's a distraction and mainly use he audio in towns and cities where they are best. The rest I just concentrate on riding and keep a map handy.

Couldn't resist the pic even if its a bit small. The Knowledge boys that I used to see all the time as a courier...

I'd agree that A5 size would be a bit restrictive. I'm a dinosaur when it comes to sat nav, much prefer a map - love the clipboard idea but as above A5 might be too small - sorry not really helping here.

I love maps, I have hundreds of them collected over the last 30 odd years of travel. Poring over a new map trying to anticipate what the terrain/roads will be like is as important to me as the trip itself. I consider myself to be a good map reader, I use the London A-Z every day at work, but................

You really can't beat sat nav on a bike. Now I don't mean just typing in a destination and letting the machine plan your route. You use it as an aid, a rolling map of the route you've planned. I know mapsourse/basecamp is clunky, but persevere and it can be your friend, I have just lead 2 trips to France where we road routes that would be just too complicated to follow on a map without endless stops to check the route. I have the audio on so I get voice prompts meaning I can concentrate on riding, only glancing at the screen when I need to. Yes it can be irritating at times and as a machine sometimes doesn't make sense, but the more you use it the easier it is recognise the little red herrings it throws up.

Much easier than having a clip board on your handlebars! Though I still carry a map in my tank bag

Certainly food for thought.

I would agree that A4 is a better size for map reading, but a board that big would be a bit of a problem.
If the map is folded so it sits on an A5 board i should still be able to read it, i'll just have to pull over more often to quickly refold it (which would be better than pulling over continually to remove map from pannier, read and then replace).

Will give some more thought.......

I sometimes use my roadbook holder as roadmap holder:

http://home.planet.nl/~scho3025/Tene...0605-00049.jpg


ofcourse... you'll have to copy/cut (parts) of the original map such that they fit your roadbook.

Mine's an ingenious one: you don't have to tape sheets together; just shove them under the foil. http://www.chalmet.net/

http://www.chalmet.net/html/photos/photo35.jpg

This instruction video shows how it works: http://www.chalmet.net/images/handleiding.wmv

HJ

Interesting........

I'm now thinking i might abandon the map board idea. I agree that a Satnav would be better and easier, i just can't afford to buy one!
The plan now is to just use my iPhone instead. The map app on it is pretty good. I can get full Ordnance Survey maps if i need them (theres for an app for it!), or i can just download the Tomtom app.

Just need to decide how to mount the phone onto the bike. Just found this and it looks pretty good;

vhttp://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160593461991&ssPageNam e=STRK:MEWAX:IT

What do you guys think?

Take a look at ridermount.com, there's a guy selling waterproof iPhone mounts with a m/c specific fitting, you can also get a ram ball set up. I have the Tom Tom app on an iPhone 4, it's accurate and extremely clear but unlike garmins there's no way to plan a detailed route. The gps chip is also power hungry so you will need to power it from the bike or it won't last long. Went camping in Cornwall a few weeks ago and with the Tom Tom on shortest route it took us down some cracking lanes, over fords and through villages well off the beaten track.
I have OS maps down to 1:25k but they don't include land ranger detail so byways/rupps etc are not marked

fwiw. Touratech make a bracket/mount to hold an iphone - you can also rotate it landscape and horizontal as you go along... it is about �100 though.

Alternatively, you can buy TomToms for around �90 these days - you don't really need a bike specific one on the Tenere - if you mount it up behind the screen, it's pretty well protected?

I still use a hooge great Garmin 2610, which, other than not having a built-in battery I'd say is still THE on-bike GPS unit to have... you can usually still find them cheap(ish) on Ebay...

Jx

In my experience, you can't really read a map while moving on a bike, even if it is in your field of view. By the time you've focused on it, found where you are, mentally rotated the map to which way you're going, figured out what the next turn is, scanned along the road for the road number, etc... you've probably crashed into something. Or you've seen sense and looked at the road again and lost where you are on the map :D

So as far as I'm concerned, the strategy should be:

1) Minimise the amount you have to look at the map.

2) Arrange the map so that when you do have to stop and look at it it only takes a few seconds.

This is my navigation setup:

http://www.wildchild.org.uk/blog/ima...8_1000x563.jpg

The map holder on the tank came from a camping shop and probably cost about a tenner. It's waterproof (the yellow bit on the near edge is the seal) and about 12" square. It also folds in half (as shown) and secures with velcro. The bit of the map that I'm on is actually on the inside of the fold. Takes me a couple of seconds to stop and unstick the velcro when I need to look at it, and then I'm looking at a big area of map so only occasionally need to refold.

It's attached, in this case, to the top of a Kriega US-5 which has all my trail tools in it. That in turn is attached to a Kriega tank harness, which lives permanently on the bike (and to which the map holder will attach directly if I'm not carrying tools).

That's carrying a map, but as I said above the key is not to need to use it. The photo above is trail-riding on trails I'd never seen before, so I was using the map quite a lot - it's important to know exactly where you are on the trails and make sure you're not veering off onto a bridleway or whatever.

However for normal road riding in the UK, I very rarely refer to a map during the journey, and I very rarely get lost. The key is sitting down for five minutes before you leave and writing some efficient directions. That's what's stuck to the inside of the screen in the photo. It's an A6 notebook in a holder which I bought from Hein Gericke. Think it cost about �8. It is actually magnetic, but obviously my screen isn't, so I just used sticky velcro to mount it.

I can't remember a normal, road-based journey I've made recently where I haven't been able to write enough directions to get there on a single side of that notebook. Think about the number of instructions a SatNav gives you... do you really need to know how to get out of your street and onto the nearest main road? If you're going from (say) Derby to London, do you really need to be told to 'stay on the motorway' when you get to Leicester? Just strip out the 95% of the instructions that are useless and write down the last few.

We live on a small island with a good road network and lots of signposts. You can get to within a few miles of any destination just with a list of road numbers and towns to aim for - and that holds whether you want to use major or minor roads. It's just the last few miles you need proper "take the second right into XXX Avenue, turn left at the roundabout into YYY Street." type directions.

Ask anyone who was at the Lakes meet about that one :D

Uberthumper, that's a great setup and pretty much what I did before sat nav came along. Although I am championing sat nav I stress it is only an aid, the tendency for most people is to just slavishly follow it, then moan because it leads them up the garden path. What I'm talking about using it for is not just going from A-B but the detailed plotting of complicated routes, for instance last week we were doing 300 mile days across France, mostly on rural twisties without the need to check a map. With 7 bikes behind you it can be a pain having to keep stopping to see where you are, especially in areas you don't know well (like rural France!).

But it will never beat local knowledge, tall buildings, woods and even low dense cloud can throw it off track, motorbike ones are expensive, there's a great deal of satisfaction to be had from using real maps.

I suppose what I'm saying is learn how to read a map and navigate using basic tools, but once you can do that don't dismiss technology, used wisely it cat enhance your ride
Oh, and is a lot better than mounting a clip board onto the front of the bike :icon_wink: ::

At the risk this will become another discussion on the pro's and con's of sat nav...

... I have a zumo since 4 years or so, and last weekend, for the first time, I went for a trip without taking a 'real' road map...

... so it seems you can get used to it...

... but like said: it's more an navigation aid and it is far from perfect. That 's something you should be aware of, especially when leading a group of bikes. So you still need navigational skills to be able to neglect or correct the sat nav.

The sat nav principle is based on navigation on street level. While touring you're mostly navigating on city/town level ('to paris via brussel') or simply direction ('head north'). The sat nav therefor gives a lot of obsolete directions, especially in a dense road network, while all you need to know what city or direction you need to go.

On top of that; there's one thing a sat nav can't do (yet) and that is: to anticipate.

On the other hand the sat nav is very good at telling you were you are... but to the smartest way around... better use your own computer (brain), assumed you know how to read a map and know how to navigate.

Sometimes I use the zumo in 'off-road' mode; set a waypoint 30 miles from home and let the compass point out the direction. Then I find my way by just turning left if the compass indicates left, and right when.. well you get it.
Often I never reach the waypoint, but I do discover some new roads and for sure have a bit of back-yard-adventure.

HJ

No argument with that - it's certainly much easier if you have to do that sort of thing. Didn't mean to turn it into a debate on the merits of SatNav - I only really mentioned it as a lead-in to the point about not needing all that many directions to get anywhere.

Maps, satnav, garmin, we'll all end up here at some time.

http://i1192.photobucket.com/albums/...1/PICT0017.jpg

Its fun getting lost.:icon_mrgreen:

Sat nav widna be any use where we go. Don't think they do proper O/S maps. Would be handy if they did tho. Would save you getting us LOST all the time.

"Sat nav widna be any use where we go"

Au contrair, you can now get sat navs for walkers/cyclists that have landranger OS maps that would be perfect off road.

But, IMHO using a paper map and compass is all part of the off road experience.

I used to do mountain bike orienteering and experimented with all sorts of map setups Inc A3! As others have said, it's almost impossible to read it whilst mobile and actually all that was needed was a place to store it, correctly folded and with easy access. Take the time to look through the route and try to visualise what it will be like, make a few notes as prompts and voila, you have uberthumpers set up!!!!

PS getting lost can be fun, but there are times when that could be dangerous (Salisbury Plain impact area???).

I'm off to the HUMM next weekend. The Zumo is loaded with my route there and back, I've linked as many of those nice green highlighted Michelin routes as I can, but when I'm there my bike will be setup as above, for paper maps. Sat nav is not allowed on the HUMM but TBH I wouldn't use it anyway

Same setup at last year's HUMM, albeit without the tools on the tank. In that case I had the sheet for the next checkpoint on the 'outside' of the map holder, and opened it up for the map itself. The directions are just for the tarmac bits to the trailhead in this case - I find Spanish maps a bit too ambiguous to be able to write directions for the trails :D

http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphot..._6122826_n.jpg

I'd go for this :drool[1]: http://www.touratech.com/shops/008/p...b5d991b372b0b8

It works really well http://www.touratech.com/shops/008/i...b5d991b372b0b8

Great if you don't want a tank-bag or have a Sat-Nav :smilies0243:

I find this quite useful
http://i1199.photobucket.com/albums/...0Z/660Z006.jpg
Old acerbis holder, takes A6 paper rolls (ebay) which i note waypoints on & then refer to a map where necessary. It mounts to the crossbrace & doesn't obscure the clocks.
HTH, Gary

Acerbis did a smaller (half width I recall) version of that one too, which is also handy for notes... or toilet paper... x

Jx