Malenki: Thanks again - a great tip. I tried the 0.02km setting on a car-drive around one of my regular “exploration” locations, and it was perfect. I was able to record a nice smooth trace, and yet it eliminated the point-clouds when I stopped to take photos. Excellent advice!

A further note to Malenki: After my statement about averaging GPS traces (now that it’s a few years “down the track”), a quick review in OSM or JOSM makes me realise that I have to re-edit some of the initial tracks that I drew with a single trace, now that I have better data. Thanks again for reminding me to review my OSM practices!

Hi Malenki.

Thanks for your input, you make a good point. It reminded me to check the recording settings on my Garmin GPSmap 60CSx (“Auto” and “Most often”). I set it up this way because when I am out-and-about, I tend to stop a lot (taking photographs, looking at birds), and I found cleaning up spurious points was very annoying.

Analysing a recent track log, I calculated an average of 5.5 second intervals between points, but that doesn’t tell the whole story; it is often 1/s when travelling at anything over 15km/h on my motorbike. In terms of usefulness for mapping, it turns out to be sufficient, particularly because multiple trips over the same roads (over many years) gives me an averaging effect with the GPS traces.

Thanks for your handy tip though - I might do some more experimenting with the recording intervals.

Thanks for your comments!

Vincent de Phily: I noticed quite a few details have been added in my home area. Good to see, as it was pretty bare when I started in 2009.

Rhubarb: There were no good maps of the official 4WD/offroad trails in the area when I started. Great to see that my desire to have accurate maps on my Garmin can benefit others who holiday in the area. *You’ve given me the idea of adding the fluker posts from around here too.