<li>Download the locations of key cave entrances, camps and other landmarks and the paths between them.</li>
<li>When walking on the plateau, turn on <b>location tracking</b> in Google Maps, or your GPS app, before you leave the car park and share your location with someone you know at base camp and/or top camp.</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Don't be misled by the apparent simplicity</b> of the tracks. The plateau is very broken and is an unremitting extent of cliffs, holes and impassable dwarf-larch scrub ("bunde" as it is known on expo). You can be 5m from the route and have lost it entirely. The <ahref="/guidebook/walkin.htm">walk to and from</a>
col leading to the plateau is comparatively easy is it is an obvious path, and marked and signposted in the earlier section.</p>
<ahref="http://expo.survex.com/expofiles/gpslogs/essentials/"><imgwidth=60%src="gps-essentials/essentials2024divert.jpg"alt="screenshot of the GPS file"></a>
<h3>Quick start for Android devices, 2024</h3>
<ul>
<li>Install OsmAnd from the Play Store (recommended GPS app)</li>
<li>Download the essential tracks and waypoints by long pressing on <adownloadhref="gps-essentials/essentials2024divert.gpx">this link</a>. You should be presented with the option to open the file with OsmAnd - do this.</li>
<p>When using your phone for prospecting for new caves, or refinding old entrances, there are two further useful files that you should consider downloading:</p>
<li><adownloadhref="gps-essentials/entrances2024.gpx">entrances2024</a> - location of all known cave entrances.</li>
<li><adownloadhref="gps-essentials/kataster-boundaries-as-tracks.gpx">kataster-boundaries-as-tracks</a> - these are <b>not paths</b> but separate areas with
different mapping designations.
These are the smooth, curved lines. They are used by prospectors when naming new caves.</li>
<li><ahref="https://www.cavinguk.co.uk/info/locatingsurveys.html">Location fixing: How to obtain a fixed point for a cave survey</a> "Galileo High Accuracy Service (HAS) is due to become partly available in 2022 and fully available in 2024, which will offer RTPPP for free around the world, both via satellite and network connections. And there will be much rejoicing. "
<h3>Adding aerial photo data overlay to OsmAnd on Android, 2024</h3>
<ul>
<li>Go to the <ahref="https://anygis.ru/Web/Html/Osmand_en">AnyGis OsmAnd page</a></li>
<li>Follow the link to "Download maps by one file (sqlitedb)" and select the "Bing Birds Eye" map</li>
<li>Follow the instructions on the AnyGis OsmAnd page to copy the file to your phone.</li>
<li>In OsmAnd:
<ul>
<li>Go to PlugIns and enable Online maps</li>
<li>Go to Configure map, enable Overlay map and select "=Satellites=Bing_birds_eye" as the overlay map</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<p>The map should now show a transparency slider which will fade the satellite image in and out. This will only work in online mode until such time as somebody works out how to cache the tiles (to be continued...)</p>
<p>It helps a great deal to get the contours and hill-shading but this is not free with iPhone or Google Play Store downloads of OSMand. However if you install OSMand from <ahref="https://f-droid.org/">F-droid</a> (Android only) instead, you can get excellently detailed contour maps for free. Or you can just pay €2.99 a month for OsmAndPro which is probably the only way to do it on an iPhone.
<p>On Android, the way to start recording a track is to use the menu button in the bottom left and select "Trip Recording". On an iPhone there is a specific button which just records a track on the top-right of the screen.
<li>"The simplest way to view a track you've downloaded is to tap on it in your device's file manager and choose to open it in OsmAnd. After that, you'll see the track in My places - My tracks or in the Dashboard - My tracks."
This is easy on a laptop, but phone browsers make it difficult to download a simple link like that - just clicking will usually (unhelpfully) display it in the browser.</p>
<p>You need to long-click and pick 'download file' or 'download link' (chrome). Then either:
<ol>
<li>Go to your 'Downloads' folder and tap on the GPX file, which should offer to load it in OSMand, or whatever other map software you use, or</li>
<li>Go into OSMand, select 'My places' and 'IMPORT', then select the file.</li>
<p>Even modern (2019) Garmin GPS devices use this old style mini-USB socket. So you will need the special cable that comes with the device. An ordinary phone USB cable won't work.
<p><ahref="https://www.cavinguk.co.uk/info/locatingsurveys.html">Location fixing: How to obtain a fixed point for a cave survey</a> "Galileo High Accuracy Service (HAS) is due to become partly available in 2022 and fully available in 2024, which will offer RTPPP for free around the world, both via satellite and network connections. And there will be much rejoicing. "
