Introduction: When entering a ride into the SCBTC web calendar, you would like to give members specifics on where exactly you are all meeting before the ride. When choosing a ride start location, it is important that there is plenty of parking at the location as some members may have to transport their bikes, and also the timing is also important as parking may be limited due to other events happening in the area. For consistency of information provided, please follow these instructions to help reduce the time it takes for the Calendar Editor to fix location problems before printing the calendar.

 

Intended Audience: All members who are granted access to enter rides into the website calendar.

For many common meeting point locations, these are already in the Meeting Point Locations drop-down box (See figure 1), so just select the meeting place from this drop-down box will automatically populate the Address, UBD and Google Maps references - just wait as it takes a few seconds after selecting the meeting point location to update the form. The meeting point places in the drop-down list are in order by 1) Town/City, followed by the 2) name of the location. In the case where there is no entry, you can manually enter all three of these fields (Address, UBD Reference and Google Maps) and press the Update button at the bottom of the page.

 

If this meeting place is going to be a regular start for future cycling events, please contact the webmaster or a committee member to have a location entry placed under Meeting Point Locations drop-down box. (Website Administrators, you will find the Cycling Meeting Places Table under the "Administration" TAB for adding new entries).

Figure 1 - Cycling Meeting Point Details Box in Calendar Event Update Screen

 

Entering UBD Co-ordinates

 

The UBD co-ordinates is a paper copy of the street directory for a particular location. Mine is the official 2011 Brisbane UBD 55th edition which also contains maps for the Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast.

 

When entering locations for the Sunshine Coast, like the example in figure 1, just enter the map number (eg 80) followed by a space and the grid reference (eg D3) only, just like the example shown in figure 1.

 

If its a street in the Brisbane Directory, such as Sandgate Between First and Second Ave, You would enter "Bris 111 A4". If street is on the Gold Coast enter "GC" as first letters, eg "GC 100 A1".

 

Figure 2 - UBD Mooloolaba, River Esplanade Meeting Place is Grid Reference D3

 

 

 

Getting GPS Co-ordinates for Google Maps

1) Start Google Maps by Clicking on http://www.maps.google.com.au (Opens in a new Window)

 

2) Type the address in the search bar. You can enter a location name eg "Sunshine Plaza, Maroochydore", or an actual street address, like "8 Caloundra St, Landsborough". Make sure the area name (eg Landsborough) is at the end of the search address. Select from the list of suggestions from drop-down list if offered one. See figure 3 below.

 

 

Figure 3 - Entering an address for a google maps reference for meeting place.

 

3) Now place your cursor over the meeting point on the map and right click once to get a pop-up menu. Left Click on "What's here?" link. See Figure 4.

 

Figure 4 - Selecting the location with "What's here?" to get GPS co-ordinate

 

 

4) The pop-up box similar to the one in figure 5 is displayed. The "-26.810345,152.967887" is the value you enter into the Google Maps field as shown in Figure 1.

 

Figure 5 - The location selected

 

5)  If you click on the GPS co-ordinates shown in figure 5, it will copy this GPS to the web browser address bar. For Microsoft Windows users, if you select this address from the web browser address bar and press the CTRL-C keys this will copy that address to the Windows Clipboard. Now toggle to the screen in Figure 1 and click in the data box just to the right of "Google Maps" tag. Press CTRL-V will paste this address into the GPS field. Press the Update button to save the changes. Sorry don't know if this will work with other computer types or tablets.

 

Testing the Google Maps Link

 

1) Start the SCBTC website in your web browser at http://www.scbtc.org.au/ . Select the Calendar page and navigate to the page that contains the event you wish to check Google Maps Reference. See figure 6.

 

Figure 6 - The Mooloolaba Activity from the non-members Calendar

 

2) Click on the words Click here to show map as shown in figure 6. Google maps will open automatically in a new Web Browser page with a balloon marking the meeting point stop you defined.

 

Its also interesting to note, that phones with Google Navigator app installed when clicking the Click here to show map will load it in the app and give you the button to navigate to that GPS co-ordinate. The app if a free one from the Google Playstore or Apple App store.