I ride almost exclusively mountain bike now; just an interval training ride on my road bike on a pave path to put in the mix. I may be using the words course, route, and trail interchangeably.
I've had my Edge 830 for 3 weeks now and done 12 +/- MTB rides on it on trails that I know, using courses that I've created on Trailforks. I want to learn how to use the device this way before I venture out into courses that I don't know. Basically I want it to help me, duh, navigate! I want to be able to do something like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z771IpF1KWM, except on an MTB trail.
I have several issues I just can't seem to resolve.
1. I have turn guidance turned on because I want it to tell me WHERE to turn when there's a fork on the trail. Isn't this what the feature is for? However, it tells me to turn on EVERY bend on the trail thinking it's a turn. Well guess what, an MTB trail has LOTS of bends. This is driving me NUTS.
2. To makes matters worse, today I was no a course I that I know like the back of my hand. When I got to several forks (don't want to use the word turn here), the device didn't tell me which fork to take. How am I supposed to trust this on a less familiar trail system?
3. I just have one data screen (to keep it simple for now) that shows time elapsed, avg. speed, and heart rate that I want showing 99% of the time when I'm riding. I have my MTB profile to only show the map during navigation. However because of #1, I see the map screen more than I do the data screen, that is, it's navigating most of the time. See how #1 drives me nuts?
4. Zoom feature fiasco - I think this has been discussed enough on this forum. But yeah, it kinda sucks.
5. Around 1:45 of the video, the guy stops, and the Edge pauses, and he is able to swipe his screen from the map to the data screen. I tried to do this several times today, but couldn't swipe, that is, I swipe but nothing happens.
I hope a Garmin support employee who is a mountain biker that has and Edge 830 can chime in on this. I ride alone most of the time because I like going at my own pace, and hate being lost in the woods I'm not familiar with. I got the Edge 830 because it seemed to be the more mountain-bike feature rich device to date. I'm hoping it would've solve the navigation issues I had on the 520, but it seems worse.
HELP!!!
