| For sunrise/sunset you'll have vastly more accurate information from a
| GPS unit, because it knows where it is. A watch will only manage the
| nearest time zone, which could be almost an hour out while a GPS will
| give it to you to the minute.
In France in particular, the sunrise/sunset time on a non-GPS watch is
likely to be *way* off due to the bizarre little jumps the timezones make in
that part of Europe. France is, if I recall correctly, offset by a full hour
from where it "should" be. The result is that it stays light far later (at
least in the summer, which I can verify by personal observation) than it
should.
--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com
"Peter Clinch" <
[email protected]> wrote in message
news:
[email protected]...
| Artemisia wrote:
|
| > I'm considering buying one of those ABC watches
|
| I have one (a Stormlite, an own-brand of one of the UK's major outdoor
| retailers) which I use for mountaineering, where it can be quite handy
| as a navigation tool. I never wear it apart from that as it's bulky and
| clumsy compared to a "normal" watch, and that is true of every one of
| these things I've ever seen: I think the sensor hardware sets bulk
| restrictions they have yet to find a way around.
|
| > The Suunto does not have a solar battery or the radio-controlled time,
| > but on the other hand has two features which I consider key: a storm
| > alarm and sunrise-sunset times. This is vital information for my cycling
| > days and I am constantly checking it on the internet.
|
| The storm alarm will be a joke, because we're not actually that good at
| weather forecasting. You'll get much better weather information from a
| local forecast. I imagine all it does is peep when the pressure drops
| like a stone, but you'll actually have a pretty good idea about it at
| least as fast by seeing that the sky's the colour of lead and there are
| big booming sounds getting louder...
|
| For sunrise/sunset you'll have vastly more accurate information from a
| GPS unit, because it knows where it is. A watch will only manage the
| nearest time zone, which could be almost an hour out while a GPS will
| give it to you to the minute.
|
| > It would be useful
| > to have it handy for when I don't have internet. Indeed, I don't really
| > understand the utility of all this alti-baro stuff otherwise - all I
| > need to know is if it's going to rain or go dark in the next hour.
|
| It can easily rain without much significant happening to the pressure.
| Significant things can happen to the pressure without it raining. A
| watch is not going to reliably tell you it's going to rain.
|
| As to will it get dark, well, at this time of year in this part of the
| world, today the sun will go down a wee bit later than it did yesterday.
| Once we're past September 23 it will be going down a little earlier
| every night. Sunrise works similarly. So as long as you've noticed
| you've your cycling day is over by X:00 hours it isn't rerally going to
| change much the next day. Furthermore, the degree of effective
| darklness will vary a lot with cloud cover, especially in winter, with
| clear skies giving far more effective daylight at the end of the day, so
| again your Magic Watch doesn't actually tell you much more than a normal
| watch plus a vague awareness of what time it's been getting dark this
| last week.
|
| > Another useful feature about the Suunto is that you can set a bearing
| > with the compass which will then tell you when you are going towards
| > where you want to go and when you are veering off-course: useful for
| > someone like me who is deficient in orientation skills. OTOH the
| > rotating bevel on the compass has been described as very hard to turn,
| > whereas the equivalent on the Casio turns correctly.
|
| If you want to navigate, especially on road systems where often you
| don't proceed in straight lines to a destination, a GPS will be
| infinitely more use to you than a compass. In order to set a compass
| bearing to a destination you need to know where you are, and where your
| destination is, and do some calculation based on the map. Taking a
| bearing off a map with a protractor compass is easy, but these aren't
| protractor compasses so you can't lay them on a map grid, so you'll need
| to take a protractor along with you, no about magnetic variation and
| generall be clued in about map and compass use. And even with all of
| that it will be of little use. A GPS, on the other hand, will tell you
| where you are and if you program in the destination it will always know
| not only the direction to your destination but how far it is and, with a
| little more effort you can program in the exact route you want to take
| to get there, point by point.
|
| > Neither watch has a feature that I _would_ like: gradient percentage -
| > the bike forums keep asking me about the gradient on my hill and I can't
| > tell you, except to say that there are parts of it that look like the
| > hypotenuse in my old math books.
|
| You won't get that from a watch, because you need to know both your
| altitude and horizontal travel at the same time to work out gradient.
| And a watch knows nothing much about your horizontal travel, so it can't
| do gradient. A GPS with a built in altimeter (like the Garmin Geko 301)
| recording a track will keep a record of it, but it eats batteries a lot
| quicker if you leave it on the whole time.
|
| What is easy, however, is working out the gradient by just looking at
| the map, assuming it has contours. Steep hills tend to have gradient
| warning on them saying how steep they are: observe and note.
|
| > Does anyone have experiences to relate
|
| To be quite frank I'd say don't bother. If you want navigation to be
| easier get a GPS. if you want to know what the weather will do look at
| a local forecast. The temperature function on all of these things only
| comes up with meaningful numbers when it isn't next to a warm radiating
| body (i.e., the wearer) so that's largely useless, barometer function is
| good if you're a keen amateur meteorologist but otherwise it just gives
| you a fairly meaningless number, and while the altitude is interesting
| in hilly country it loses most of the navigation appeal it has for
| Alpinism as you know you're on the road. Any GPS will give you an
| altitude estimate, a GPS with barometric altimeter will do all that a
| watch can do and more.
|
| > in Isle de France where the weather reports constantly predict storms
| > for 4 days on end, but then we only get 20 minutes of piddle, and I end
| > up not cycling when I could have!
|
| And that's with professionals and supercomputers and vast data grids, so
| do you really think a simple watch that only monitors pressure where it
| is will do better? It won't, so in practice if you trust it to tell you
| the weather then you'll miss days you could have taken and you'll get
| soaked when you thought you'd be dry. Rather than a watch, spend the
| money on a decent set of waterproofs that make rain much less of an
| issue is my advice.
|
| Pete.
| --
| Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
| Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
| Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
| net
[email protected] http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/
