OpenStreetMap
I dropped in on the in-laws on 30th December 2007. Before visiting, I noticed that the area hadn't been mapped yet. My brother-in-law has a (now) antique Garmin GPS 45XL so we arranged to spend the afternoon mapping some of the area. We hadn't accounted for the fact that the temperature would drop to -4 degrees Celcius so it turned out to be a very short but enjoyable bit of mapping.
Back at my in-laws with a nice hot cup of coffee we spent a couple of interesting hours trying to download, massage and upload data from the GPS. Thankfully we got there in the end. Our first contribution! The trace was a bit wobbly and I'm still not sure whether that's to be expected or whether the GPS device is old. Will investigate.
The afternoon was excellent fun and it was great to map Sandacre Road (my company's namesake). Plenty more to be done in that area and looking forward to it ... :o)
Discussion
Comment from Gregory Williams on 6 January 2009 at 08:57
If you were surveying by foot then that may explain the wobbly trace. I've found that as soon as you achieve bicycle / car speeds that it's usually quite a smooth trace. Also, try to log at quite a high frequency (limited by your GPS's capabilities, memory, possible SD card support, and the time you want to be mapping for). I log at one trackpoint per second.