The basics of loading BBTA tracks

The tracks provided here will generally be as KMZ files. These are compressed (zipped) track files in a special Google Earth (GE) format.

All you have to do is double click, or Open one of these files for it to be loaded and displayed in Google Earth. You can also Open one of these files from the GE File menu. These files are very small.

When you open the track file, it will be listed in the "Places" section. Probably in the "Tempory Places" subsection. You can hide/display these files by ticking the boxes at the left. This is very useful to know if you have loaded quite a few tracks - after a while they will all overlap each other if you do not start turning them off.

Deleting Tracks

Once a track has been loaded - you can delete it (ie, not have it show up any more in GE) by clicking on the top most line in the Places list, do a right-mouse to show the menu, then select "Delete contents". The line you generally want is the line that shows the full filename - ie something like "Banyo-Sandgate 37km.kmz". Please note that this does not delete the file from your hard disk.

Setting up Google Earth

I suggest that you go to the GE Tools/Options form and fix up a few settings to make it work better with cycling tracks. These are some settings that I have found useful.

How to play a "tour"

First of all, open up the track file that you have just loaded. Click on the "Path" line. Then click the blue "play" button.

You can "double-click" on any way points that might be listed to jump to those way points. You cannot play a tour from a way point.

Once the tour starts playing, you will actually "fly" along the bike route like a helicopter. The trick is to get the height low enough so that you can see enough detail, but not too low so that it starts blurring. You also need to adjust the tour speed slow enough to allow the system to stream in high detail scenery as you fly - but not too fast so that there is not enough time to download.

If you double click on the name of the track, you will generally see the whole ride shown from directly above - ie a map view.