As a first test balloon for mapping with compass and distance, I choose two locations: Piazza della Riforma and Via Nassa, both in Lugano's old town.

But before I could start, I needed to calibrate the step counter. For that one needs a known distance. Conveniently, the railways station is on the way and, even more conveniently, the length of a train is written on its side. So I found out that my average step is 85 cm long. Verification along the same train showed that it was off by less than a meter along the 75 m long train. Good enough.

Downtown I started with Piazza Riforma. I GPSed a reference point in the wide open, sketched the piazza and then took directions and distances. Afterwards, on the computer, it turned out that some of the directions are as much as 30 degrees off. Whether this is me not yet knowing the compass well enough or this is just the normal deviation of a compass, needs to be determined.

Via Nassa went altogether a lot better. There already is a trace of it in the map. My newly determined course is extremely close to that one, except in some parts where the old one was clearly wrong. Oddly enough, on the last bit very close to Piazza Riforma the direction was off by about 15 degrees yet again.

So, next thing is to try the piazza again, maybe with a couple of extra GPS-based reference points and some more care when taking directions.

I wonder if it is worth starting to clean up the Italo-Swiss border which became a gigantic mess after the Italian border mass-import. Not to mention that Italy looks terrible now both in Mapnik and Osmarender with all those village borders.

Yesterday, I picked up where I was interupted last time and strolled a bit through Parco Ciani. Today I followed up by mapping pretty much all streets west of the old town. There is only Via Gialli left, which is along my way to work, so could be done next week, too, if the weather is holding up.

Once downtown, I went and bought a couple of new gadgets: a compass, a hard-cover sketch block, and a step counter. The latter was an accident, as they had one on sale at Manor. Now I am ready for a proper mapping of the old town.

The weather forecast was for rain but surprise, surprise: sunshine. So I went off to another sweep of Lugano. I would have mapped Parco Ciani as well, but the N800 announced "low battery" just as I was about to enter the park. Note to self: charge equipment before mapping.

Made another round through Lugano's old town on the way home. The quality of the GPS traces is rather poor within its narrow streets. Makes mapping somewhat challenging. Maybe I need to get a good reference point, a compass and start counting steps.

This time I managed to not get carried away and stayed close: Took the other route to Muzzano and then looped around Biogno. Quite nice up there. Also, from the looks of it, quite rich. Why the Swiss like to build there houses as big concrete blobs is beyond me, though.

Finally found a street right next to where I live that somehow slipped from mapping so far.

Only intended to go for a short walk, mapping a couple of streets in the
neighbourhood of Massagno and Lugano. Ended up in Muzzano, Ponte Tresa,
Luino and, ultimately, Locarno. How did that happen?

Along the way I did some minor work in Ponte Tresa and Luino but the
train and bus connections are just too good and it was getting sort
of late. Also did a first train of the Luino--Cadenazzo railway line.
Unfortunately, CFF has replaced the old NPZ by Flirts already and the
signal quality was quite poor.

No mapping in Locarno. The area around the station is incredibly
messy, especially on a Sunday around 6 p.m.