Road Trip Planning Software

[Jerry Winchester]

Has anyone used any trick software for planning their trips? I have been using MapQuest for rough estimates, but I am also sure it plots segments that are not bus friendly and I would also like the ability to adjust average speed, insert waypoints and the like.

It also says the fastest route from Houston to Denver is thru Oklahoma City and Wichita, but if you piece it together, Houston-Dallas-Amarillo-Denver is over 100 miles shorter.:confused:

[ken&ellen]

I have used Co-Pilot which allows me to select RV friendly roads, figures the costs, and prints out a very nice trip packet complete with maps. I understand there is even better software , but I do not know the brand name.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

I have a Magellan that my daughter bought me for Christmas 2004. It works very well except I have to be careful it doesn't take me down a road not suitable for a bus due to height or weight issues.

Prior to that if we were planning a long trip we used AAA, and over the years I have a very complete collection of state and city maps.

I have used internet mapping, but it seems when we are planning a trip we often end up just using a highlighter and a map. It gives us a chance to see places we haven't been and to come up with ideas for side trips.

The AAA membership is cheap compared to the cost of maps and trip ticks we have gotten from them.

[Jerry Winchester]

Well I scanned Microsoft's Trips & Streets today and it looked promising. I filled out the FMCA trip routing request and will e-mail that and see what it looks like, but I hadn't considered AAA.

Although I have 396 Garmin I am going to use for the trip, the MS software comes with a GPS receiver that plugs into a USB port thus turning your laptop into a GPS as well with a much larger screen. What I need is some kind of multi-function display where the back up camera monitor is so that I could select the GPS, the back up camera or some other randomly chosen but essential information to be displayed on it. I am sure the newer coaches have this feature.

Anyone use this software before?

[MangoMike]

Jerry,
Check this out from rv.net

Mike
http://www.rv.net/forum/index.cfm/fuseaction/thread/tid/16873191/srt/pa/pging/1/page/1.cfm ("http://www.rv.net/forum/index.cfm/fuseaction/thread/tid/16873191/srt/pa/pging/1/page/1.cfm")

[Jerry Winchester]

Mike,

I read the reviews and they read like the reviews on Amazon. Some think it is the greatest thing and others are dissapointed or liked the older version. Go figure. For $100 I may try the MS stuff and see how it works. I also didn't know about RV net. Looks like it might have some useful info. Thanks for digging it up.

Jerry

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Hey!!!!!!!


For $100 I'll tell you where to go.:D

[Jerry Winchester]

I already have enough strange voices telling me where to go.

I was picking up my Bonanza from the avionics shop in Fredricksburg were they had installed a Garmin 330 transponder. Heading back to Houston, I was flying thru the Austin airspace at night. Somewhere the other side of Austin, a woman's voice comes over the headset and says, "Traffic unavailable". Since I was in the airplane alone, this was a little unsettling since I knew it wasn't a radio transmission and I couldn't tell where it came from.

Seems the a-holes at the shop forgot to tell me that the transponder was hooked up to the audio panel and that from time to time it would talk depending on if there was traffic or if the Mode S was offline.

Then I was flying back to Houston from Stillwater a few months back after attending a football scrimmage. My old roommate was hauling me back to the airport in his beater car that had no AC so the windows were down. I call flight service on my cell phone to get the brief. I get a woman briefer (not that there is anything wrong with that) and as she starts thru the brief a Honda car with one of those big can looking mufflers that are way loud passes on my side and it drowns out the conversation.

Whe she resumes she asks me, "Are you farting?"

I said, "No maam I am not farting, a car passed by with a loud muffler and it just sounded like a fart."

Then she says, "No I asked if you were DEPARTING..."

I said, "No I'm not doing that either.....":o

I swear I am not hard of hearing although my wife says I am hard of listening.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

OK, now I don't want you parking next to me at the POG. I'll take my chances with Mango.


Oooop. I misread that. I thought you were farting. You can park next to me. But about those voices.....

[ken&ellen]

To think I lost my medical because a heart problem........but you can keep flying with a fart problem????? Nothing wrong with my hearing! :rolleyes:

[Jon Wehrenberg]

The ultimate:

Farting in a pressurized plane. Especially when you sit in the front seat and the outflow valves are in the rear bulkhead.

Life is good.

[Jerry Winchester]

The ultimate:

Farting to pressurize your plane :eek:

[Jon Wehrenberg]

I will pass along some wisdom my wife and I have learned after 44 years.

We know friends have become close friends when we can openly discuss bodily functions without feeling embarrassed.

I think we are getting to that point here.

I don't think the administrator or webmaster had a clue that this group would sink to the lowest levels this soon. And what makes this even more unbelievable is that when folks see us tooling down the highway in our buses they think we are hoity-toity snobs.

If only they knew.;)

[Jerry Winchester]

Well to get back to the original thought, I bought the MS software thru Amazon and installed it last week. I had been working on a Houston-Jackson-Yellowstone-Salt Lake-Las Vegas-Grand Canyon-Monument Valley-Houston jaunt for the beginning of the summer and had been using MapQuest and an Excel spreadsheet to show the miles, times, fuel consumption and cost. I loaded that route to see how it performed.

The new software took a little work to get sorted out, but worked pretty good. It was only marginally better than the clunky way I was doing it. However it printed out some nice maps and directions complete with start and milestone times.

Then I took the whole thing on a road test to College Station this afternoon. I got the one with the GPS module (can you have too many GPS units?) It worked well on the laptop and the big map was scalable and very readable. The chick's voice giving directions wasn't naggy or harsh, so that was a plus. :D

However, the one thing it didn't do was keep the snapperhead girls in the back seat from asking "Where are we? or Are we there yet?" Go figure.

[MangoMike]

Jerry,

Your story about DEPARTING brought tears to my eyes. Gawd it was funny.:D

Mike

[Steve Cooper]

I just installed the Microsoft Streets & Trips with GPS locator on my laptop about three weeks ago and I love it. So far, I've only used in the car since I have the Kenwood system in the coach, but it's relatively easy to use, and has a ton of information available. I'm really looking forward to using on a trip that I haven't made a hundred times before to get the real benefit of the trip routing, etc...
Best part was that it was on sale at Office Depot for $95.00 and I had a gift certificate for $50.00 which brought down the total cost to $45.00
What's not to love?
And like was said earlier, you can never have too many GPS's

[rfoster]

THIS BOARD IS BETTER EVERY DAY; NOT ONLY HELPFUL BUT NOW OVERFLOWING WITH COMEDY AND ENTERTAINMENT!
I HAVE MICROSOFT STREETS AND TRIPS WHICH I LIKE PRETTY GOOD. i HAVE HAD SOME DELORME SOFTWARE BEFORE THIS (MAP AND GO) AND PREFER THE MS. I ALSO USE THE GARMIN STREET PILOT GPS -WHEN ON THE ROAD. IT WILL FIND RESTURANTS, REST STOPS, VARIOUS RETAIL OUTLETS IF YOU HIT THE CORRECT MENUS. IT TALKS TO ME BUT NEVER ASK PERSONAL QUESTIONS, SO YOU CAN PERFORM A VARIETY OF TASK WITH OUT INTERFERENCE - EVEN HAS BUS MENU NO EXPERIENCE WITH LOW OVERPASSES YET.

WHEN I FIRST SHOPPED FOR A PORTABLE GPS I THOUGHT I WANTED A LARGE SCREEN, BUT WAS TOLD BY THE SALES PERSON THE GARMIN STREET PILOT WAS THE PREFERRED CHOICE BASED ON EXPERIENCE. I RELUCTANLY WENT ALONG WITH IT AND HAVE FOUND THE VERBAL INSTRUCTIONS ARE EASIER TO FOLLOW THAN TRYING TO LOOK AT A SCREEN WHILE DRIVING. HOPE THIS INFO HELPS SOMEONE.
- IN ADDITION THE NATURAL BEAUTY OF EAST TENN IS HARD TO BEAT. ROGER

[Jon Wehrenberg]

I have a Magellan and it has the voice which is very helpful to the driver, but my passengers hate listening to her.

One thing I learned real quick is while GPS is nice it is not like the GPS in a plane that will not lead you into a bad situation. The highway GPS units do not know you are a bus and there have been numerous occasions where I caught it trying to guide me down a street with load limits or where there were height limits. There is no substitute for using the trucker's atlas and reviewing the height restrictions section if you are exploring new territory.

Also, upgrades are essential. I found two specific areas where my GPS has not caught up with the highway construction. The area SW or Orlando where the roads around I4 and 192 are being completely revised mess up the GPS and where 295 joins 95 south of Jacksonville is completely revised also. My maps show it, but the GPS hasn't caught up. You still need to be ahead of things unless you have the ability to back up.

[Jerry Winchester]

And all this from a man who can't upgrade his GPS on a computer and has to fart to pressurize his plane.

What a wizard ;)

And Mr. R. Foster - one of the charter member agreements on this board is having fun at the expense of others. MangoMike is in charge of new member hazing, but he is so damn lazy he wants Jon to shine his holes. What's up with that?:eek:

Welcome aboard and let Jon know if there is anything he can do to make your coach shinier. Is that a word, shinier? :confused: Lew, help me out here...

[rfoster]

Jerry: Thanks for the welcome comment. This board has already saved me more than the price of admission many times plus the entertainment value - well- uh--
but anyway - the board led me to talk to Jon who has same coach as I so I'll tell you this story. Recently the small electrical compartment under the drivers window would not unlock on my coach. The key would turn but to no effect. I studied the lock underneath (steering compartment) and determined if the two were identical, i could get to it with a slim jim . But being a new owner and could not remember the lock - having seen it only once or twice at most. I called Jon and he was kind enough to check his and describe them as being identical I was able to relase the two large screws and work a slim jim type rod in and in less than a minute I was able to break into my own coach. Jon and I decided that since there were no valuables in these compartments - I will probably leave the key lock unlocked and just use the lock screws. The Cam lever on the backside of the lock traveled beyond the track that it is supposed to operate in. A good bend and it was back on track. Hope this info helps someone. - but thanks to the board and Jon I am in.:cool:
roger

[lewpopp]

Jerry

I think the word you want to use is shinnier :D

On top of that, another word that you can use is FLATULATION. I think I spelled it right, but you would know that they all smell the same.

I have a special hole polishing pad but don't know if I have the ambition. Just the same, I'll try a couple and see if I can get into the "WHEELHOLE GANG" at the rally

[Jerry Winchester]

The trip planning software is working pretty well. Used it on the Memphis BBQ tour then on the POG 1 run to Florida. Here is the plot for tomorrow's trip.

http://jdub.smugmug.com/photos/71248694-M.jpg

[rfoster]

JW:
Looks like a great trip for the family.

We need day to day reports with pictures!
Roger that

[Jerry Winchester]

http://jerrywinchester.blogspot.com/

Try that.

[Ray Davis]

The new software took a little work to get sorted out, but worked pretty good. It was only marginally better than the clunky way I was doing it.

Have you looked by any chance at randmcnally.com? They offer free trip routing service online by simply registering (no cost). It does a pretty fair job, considering free. Evidently you can purchase an advanced memebership which does better mapping etc.

I would like to find something that you could define better restrictions, like height, width or weight, so it wouldn't route you down a street which can't accomodate a bus. Most of the packages I've seen do tend to keep you on the highway though, rather than scenic roads.