[Talk-GB] Mapping from a survey

[Keith Robertson]

I always map from a personal survey. Most of the time it’s from a Garmin GPS. These days that’s usually a Fenix 7X GPS watch. Fairly new to me, so far it looks to be more accurate than my older 6X. 

I mostly tweak and edit footpaths I come across when walking and mountaineering out in remote areas of Snowdonia and the mountains of Scotland. One has to be very careful editing these kind of things and mindful of how others may end up using the ‘new path’. Most of the time it’s to correct obvious mistakes copied from Ordinance Survey detail or the path on the map really is obsolete and superseded as evidenced by useful Strava Heatmaps. Sometimes they are not on any map at all, but obviously well constructed and well used by the public. I try not to map obvious animal created paths only occasionally used by humans. 

Once the track is stopped and saved on the watch it’s automatically sent to both Garmin and Strava ‘clouds’. From either of these I can export the track to a computer (or iPad). I then just upload the GPX track, called a ‘Trace’ for some reason in OSM speak, to the standard OSM web based editor and edit away. This works reasonably well in the Safari web browser on my iPad Pro so I can edit in the evenings when away from home if I want to.

On iOS (iPhone) there is a brilliant OSM editing app called ‘Go Map!!’ Once mastered it is wonderful. You can track where you are and edit the OSM database live ‘in the field’. It’s a fully featured editor, not some cut-down features missing kind of thing. Although it’s great, I tend not to use it too often as using it gets in the way of a good walk. Handy to check on features though, to see if they are correct on the ground. 

Keith
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