Navigation? deviate slightly "off course" takes ages to acknowledge when "course found"

OK so after hours of reading I think I now understand that my 530 doesn't try to help me navigate directly back to the route when I go off course even with my settings above.

During my upcoming bike packing where being on the route on remote bush trails will be vital to my safety I am not going to be able to rely on my 530.
I will still use the 530 but will also be following turn by turn by RWGPS on my phone using Bluetooth headphones and have my wife's Wahoo on the bars which shows me a much simpler representation of my location on the route that is easy to see at a glance.

Using three devices seems like overkill, if I decided to cut that to two devices I would get rid of the 530.
Perhaps the 530 is ok for navigating a city that you are unfamiliar with, but I want to follow a route precisely in the bush and I'm not finding the 530 very helpful for that.  

The best practice so far is to set it to No Recalculation. You'll have to rely on yourself to get back to that very difficult nearly invisible (in reality)  to see magenta route.

Otherwise if u leave the unit to recalculate - results can vary (as u have found out). Sometimes it brings you back to your route, and other times it totally delete your loaded route and produces it's own course to the destination. Garmin has not taken the trouble to explain the triggers for when this will happen. The programmer (i always suspected it's 1) will take that knowledge to his grave.

Yes, the recalculation is bad. But if you have the map showing your route, Isn't this enough?

Yes, the recalculation is bad. But if you have the map showing your route, Isn't this enough?

I believe there is a need for a recalculation function that is easy to activate - a one button thing while cycling - when the route is not ideal and you're getting closer to the destination - it's painful to have to delete the current course, re-select the course - yes to riding it.....by that time i'm probably in the ditch or have gone into the back of a parked car.

The off course warning is determined by the distance from the track.

Since you get course warnings when turn guidance is turned off, making changes to the routing options should not be expected to do anything to the off course warnings.  

Lock on road is a display setting. It does not affect routing. It's more intended for use in cars, which means you should probably keep it off when riding. 

I have "lock on road" turned off as I won't be riding on main roads, the "off course" notification is ok, my problem is that the "course found" notification when I get back on course is so slow to recognise that I'm back on course that it's useless.

giantrat said:

I have tried all the different GPS options and a few of the routing options, nothing has helped so far. Currently I have Popularity Routing OFF, Routing mode Mixed Terrain, Lock to road OFF, Avoidance ALL OFF, Recalculation OFF.

Mone of these will do anything to the off course warning.

There's nothing you can do about that - if you're in unfamiliar territory you'll have to watch the map page to see taht you're back to the magenta (invisible color) route. Not an easy thing to do when you're riding with others or have to watch out on the road. The unit is small and prioritize saving battery power over providing super quick responses.

that's why it's much better to have Recalculation DISABLED so the unit doesn't confuse you when it re-routes.