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GPS Waypoint management Information

What is this article about?

If you want to: Then you'll want to read on.

What you'll need:

Overall scheme for using your Garmin GPS, Waypoint+, and TopoUSA 2.0:

We will use Waypoint+ as the repository for route, waypoint, and track information. Waypoint+ communicates well with your GPS, but it doesn't send its data to TopoUSA in the correct format. At the same time, TopoUSA communicates with your GPS, but it doesn't send its data to Waypoint+ properly. So, when needed, we will use the GPS as an intermediary between Waypoint+ and TopoUSA.

Before doing this data transfer work, you'll want to empty your GPS of all route, waypoint, and track data. You do this by downloading all the GPS's data to Waypoint+, saving that data off to disk as a WP+ file (.wpt), then on your GPS, deleting all routes, waypoints, and tracks. After you're all done with your work, you can load that .wpt file back into WP+ and then upload everything back to the GPS, if you like. Read the Waypoint+ documentation for some caveats.

Some notes:
1. Waypoint+ and TopoUSA will fight over the serial port if you have them both running.

3. Think of your PC as being on your desk and the GPS as being up in the air. You'll download from the GPS to Waypoint+ or TopoUSA, and going the other way, you'll upload to the GPS.

4. If you're on a flying trip, and have a laptop PC with you, a good practice would be to download your flight track to the PC (using WP+) at the end of each day, then clear the track log from your GPS. That way, each day's flight will be on a separate track log. With Waypoint+, you can load and process a single track, or combine several, on the way to displaying them on TopoUSA's map.

5. In TopoUSA, if the "Exchange" button is not available (it's greyed out), it's usually because you don't have your GPS hooked up to your computer.

6. There are several "Quirks" in Waypoint+ that you should know about before continuing...


Sections in this document:

   - Creating a Route with waypoints in TopoUSA:
   - Uploading a Route from TopoUSA to your GPS:
   - Downloading Routes & Waypoints from your GPS to Waypoint+:
   - Uploading Routes & Waypoints from Waypoint+ to your GPS:
   - Sending a track to TopoUSA: (includes downloading a route from your GPS to TopoUSA)
   - Creating "Nearby Landmarks" Waypoints:

Creating a Route with waypoints in TopoUSA:

In TopoUSA 2.0:

Uploading a Route from TopoUSA to your GPS:

Click the GPS tab. Click the Navigate tab. The route will be uploaded to your GPS. The GPS will have a message for you - "transfer has been completed". If you go to the route list you'll find your route and its waypoints. You'll notice that the name of the waypoint is also in the waypoint's comment field. If your waypoint name in TopoUSA was longer than 6 chars., the full name - up to 16 chars - will be in the comment field, but only the first 6 will be in the waypoint name field.

Downloading Routes & Waypoints from your GPS to Waypoint+:

Editing the Waypoints in the Route list:

Bring up a list of all waypoints for a route:
   1. click Routes/List.
   2. click on a route name to highlight it.
   3. click on the "edit" button at top-left of window, and choose "list".

You'll notice two things in this list:
   a. Nothing in the waypoint itself tells you which route it belongs to.
   b. The Description field contains the Waypoint name a second time.
On your GPS, waypoints are unique items that can be assigned to a route, removed from a route, or re-assigned to another route. Unfortunately, you can't tell what its 'route' status is when you're looking at the 'waypoint list' screen. Also, when you want to change your next waypoint with a "goto" operation, you may have to page down through a dozen or more waypoints, trying to pick out the one you want.

To get around this, I like to name my waypoints "1ALNCH" for launch, "1BTP1" for turnpoint 1, etc. The first character is the route number, and the 2nd character is A,B,C to keep them in order alphabetically in the waypoint list on the GPS. Unfortunately, this only leaves me 4 characters to give the waypoint a unique name. Then too, some varios want the Waypoint name to include a few characters of altitude information that they can then use for final-glide calculations.

To take care of the Description redundancy, and to help with the short-waypoint-name problem, you can edit the Description field so it'll show a full name for the waypoint, including the altitude if you like. You have 16 characters to work with here.

You can also assign a different icon to waypoints if you like.

When you are finished editing, you'll want to save this Route/Waypoint data to disk for future use.
   - close the 'Route List' window.
   - click File/Save/Route. Save the file as a Waypoint+ file (.wpt file extension).

Uploading Routes & Waypoints from Waypoint+ to your GPS:

What about 'free' waypoints that are not part of a route?
If you have waypoints in the waypoint list, uploading them to your GPS is the same as uploading routes: Either upload all waypoints with GPS/Upload-to-GPS/track, or upload a single waypoint by going into the waypoint list, highlighting one or more waypoints (Ctrl-click, Shift/click), then Edit/Send to upload the selected waypoints to your GPS.

Sending a track to TopoUSA:

This is the fun part. You can view a track of your flight overlayed on TopoUSA's map. But, you have to decide beforehand what you want to see, since there are two ways of getting your track data into TopoUSA.

If you want: you'll have to display a line drawing of the track(s) on a 2D map.

If you want: you'll have to display routes on the 3D map.

We'll assume that the starting point for this exercise is a waypoint+ combined file that you saved to disk.
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Sending a 2D track from Waypoint+ to TopoUSA:

In Waypont+: In TopoUSA: Some notes on Draw layers:

1. Only one draw layer can be displayed at a time. If you want to display several flights together, you'll have to combine them in WP+, then send that combined file to TopoUSA.

2. The list of draw layers can become quite lengthy as you create & import drawing files. You can delete files here, but if you want to move a file to another subdirectory so it won't show in the list, but still be available, go to the subdirectory where you told TopoUSA to maintain its document files (you did this when you installed TopoUSA). You'll find a "Delorme Docs\Draw" subdirectory where these files reside.

3. After your track is displayed, you can click the "Done" button to return to the Draw window. There you can change the color, line width, and style of your track, if you like. Click on the arrowhead button, then click on the line.

4. As you experiment with how WP+ sends data to TopoUSA, you can keep both pgms running on your PC. Simply change a configuration item in WP+, save the track to disk, then import it into TopoUSA. Since the comm port isn't being used by either pgm, they won't fight.

5. No draw objects will display on a 3D map.
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Sending a 3D track from Waypoint+ to TopoUSA:

Some notes on Routes:

1. You'll notice that these 'Exchanged' routes only have two waypoints, at start and end.

2. You can display as many routes as you like at the same time. Click the "Directions" button, then check those routes you want to see.

3. All routes show as dashed lines. Only one route will be highlighted yellow. That will be the last route you checked. If the wrong route is highlighted, simply uncheck, then check the one you want.

4. All routes will be displayed on the 3D map.

5. If you want a single waypoint/landmark to be labeled on the 3D map, create a route consisting of a single waypoint. You'll get a green dot with its associated text label/name.

Creating "Nearby Landmarks" Waypoints:

So far we've been talking about waypoints as part of a route you plan to fly. The nice thing about a route is that your GPS will automatically connect-the-dots, going from one route waypoint to the next, showing you which way to go on each leg. But, I like to know the names of landmarks along the way, even though I'm not planning on flying over them. I want more waypoints. Waypoints that are not part of a route. You already know how to do this. Just follow these steps: You can create a "landmarks" waypoint list for each site you fly. Simply load it up to your GPS, along with whatever route file you plan on using. Then as you fly, you'll see these landmarks appear on your map screen. If you followed the naming scheme of 1a... 1b... for route waypoints, they'll all be together if you need to do a "goto" to pick one of them.


Ernie Camacho, Jan. 2001.

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