CUCC Expedition Handbook

Essential GPS information

a bit of the plateau

GPS basics for safety

SAFETY. Everyone gets lost on the plateau.

Don't get lost for long as this causes rescue plans to be initiated.

What EVERYONE needs to do

• Install a GPS app on your phone.
• Check your phone configuration.
• Download the locations of key cave entrances, camps and other landmarks and the paths between them.
• When walking on the plateau, turn on location tracking 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.

Don't be misled by the apparent simplicity 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 walk to and from the col leading to the plateau is comparatively easy as it is an obvious path, and is marked and signposted in the earlier section.

Quick start for Android devices, 2024

• Install OsmAnd from F-droid (or the Play Store, but this version has limitions) (recommended GPS app)
• In the settings in OsmAnd, go to Maps & Resources -> Europe -> Austria and download the standard maps for Styria and Upper Austria.
• Download the essential tracks and waypoints by long pressing on this link. You should be presented with the option to open the file with OsmAnd - do this.
• OsmAnd defaults to not displaying labels on the waypoints (caves and camps). Tap on a point to reveal what it represents.

Android: Long press download this GPX file

Quick start for iPhones, 2024

• Install OsmAnd from the Apple Store (recommended GPS app)
• In the settings in OsmAnd, go to Maps & Resources -> Europe -> Austria and download the standard maps for Styria and Upper Austria.
• Download the essential tracks and waypoints by pressing on this link.
• Go to Downloads - you should see the file. Click on the export icon next to the file name and select OsmAnd from the list of apps.
• OsmAnd defaults to not displaying labels on the waypoints (caves and camps). Tap on a point to reveal what it represents.

iPhone Long press download this GPX file

If the quick start doesn't work for you, go to the general instructions further down this page.

GPS for prospecting

When using your phone for prospecting for new caves, or refinding old entrances, there are two further useful files that you should consider downloading:

• entrances2024 - location of all known cave entrances.
• kataster-boundaries-as-tracks - these are not paths but separate areas with different mapping designations. These are the smooth, curved lines. They are used by prospectors when naming new caves.
• Location fixing: How to obtain a fixed point for a cave survey "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. "

Adding aerial photo data overlay to OsmAnd on Android, 2024

• Go to the AnyGis OsmAnd page
• Follow the link to "Download maps by one file (sqlitedb)" and select the "Bing Birds Eye" map
• Follow the instructions on the AnyGis OsmAnd page to copy the file to your phone.
• In OsmAnd:
  • Go to PlugIns and enable Online maps
  • Go to Configure map, enable Overlay map and select "=Satellites=Bing_birds_eye" as the overlay map

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...)

Getting the Topography

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 F-droid (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.

Recording tracks

If using OsmAnd, you need to go to Plugins and enable "Trip recording" to be able to record track logs.

If you are looking for how to upload one of your own GPS tracks, go to gpxupload.

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.

The OsmAnd documentation says:

• "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."

More documentation on this to follow...

General instructions

Install a GPS app (e.g. OSMand) first.

Do one of

• Download the GPX file from the expo server direct to computer/phone/GPS - recommended
• Upload the GPX file to phone/GPS from computer

or, if you can't get those to work

• Download the data to your phone from an online GPS app

Download the GPS essentials file from the expo server

BEFORE you download the gpx file, install OSMand on your phone. Then, when the download happens, you will be prompted as to which app you want to use to veiw the file and you can select OSMand - but only if you installed OSMand first.

Use the links in the table at the top of the page.

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.

You need to long-click and pick 'download file' or 'download link' (chrome). Then either:

1. 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
2. Go into OSMand, select 'My places' and 'IMPORT', then select the file.

Upload the GPS essentials file to your device

This is where it gets tricky because every device and phone app does this differently.

GPS phone apps

This should work the same way whether you have an iPhone or an Android phone.

We recommended OsmAnd as it is very capable, but you can use others.

On android phones, this may be best achieved by installing from F-Droid rather than the plan store

Garmin and other GPS-specific devices

If you have a GPS-specific device such as a Fitbit, Apple watch, Garmin watch or other Garmin device, see GPS-devices.

The very latest GPS essentials file

This (nerds only) has been moved to a separate page: regenerating essentials.gpx.