Rally Roadbook Reader, the app, the tech, the how-to. Apple and Android
- Jonathan Binnington
- 1 day ago
- 8 min read
Updated: 8 hours ago
The founding principle of Vancouver Island Motosports Events is to provide affordable, accessible motorcycle motorsport to grassroots motorcycle enthusiasts.
This blog post is intended to take readers who are unfamiliar with the Rally Roadbook Reader app through what it is, what it can do and how to get PDF roadbooks into it and up-and-displayed and therefore meet this principle.
I fully appreciate that not everyone in the 21st Century is 100% tech savvy and therefore using systems such as Rally Roadbook Reader can pose a significant barrier to participation in events.
I will write this in a step-by-step style that will reduce any learning curves.
There are other PDF roadbooks reader apps available. The VIME roadbooks are published as PDF documents and can be loaded into whatever you preferred reader is. I can only advise on Rally Roadbook Reader (RRR).
What is Rally Roadbook Reader?
Rally Roadbook Reader (RRR) is a tablet and smartphone app, designed and produced by the same people who produce the computer programme Rally Navigator used to write rally roadbooks.
RRR is available as a free download for Apple and Android tablets and smartphones. You get the app from the usual places. In order to use the full suite of functions in RRR (speedometer, compass, odometer) you must have a device that is GPS-chip enabled. The GPS chips in smartphones perform well enough but a remote GPS receiver can significantly improve location performance.
For a detailed explanation of this please see:
and
You can Bluetooth a remote GPS receiver to a tablet that doesn’t have a GPS chip and it may be cheaper for you to buy a SkyPro XGPS160 and pair it with your existing tablet than buy a GPS-equipped tablet (even second hand).
Final note here, your RRR tablet/phone doesn’t need cell phone capability. You can upload PDFs by wifi or by pairing you non-cell device to one that is cell service capable device…
But what is a “roadbook”?
For completeness and clarity it is necessary to back up a little here…. A rally roadbook is a technical document that describes a route for drivers/riders comprising of a series of route-direction instructions detailed by distance to be travelled, compass heading, road junction sketch diagrams (tulips) and other safety and significant information.
The roadbook is read waypoint to waypoint, line by line, junction and/or “waypoint of significance” at a time, from the start line to the finish. An example is shown below.
In this example of just three pages, the first page gives the name of the route, its distance and required fuel range, some information for participants and the start and finish points (including latitude and longitude).
The second and third pages are to be read line by line.
Line 1 has the start position (lat and longitude in the small box on the far right bottom - put that into your GPS mapping app and it will show you exactly where …),
Left box gives distances (running total and the distance from the previous waypoint to the current waypoint),
Middle box gives a “tulip” sketch of the road junction (with different classes of roads coded), significant features at each junction and instructions.
Right box gives further information and the compass heading on leaving the junction shown in the tulip.
The roadbook example above uses all of the icons, abbreviations and symbols you can expect in a VIME roadbook - a fraction of the full FIA/FIM range. As an experienced road rider, you will find most of the icons very familiar and those that aren’t used in road signs are intended to be intuitive (such as exclamation marks for caution-danger).
Everything you see on a waypoint-line in a roadbook is relevant, even if the relevance escapes you in the moment. It might be of low importance such as a hairpin bend with a distance mark (to give you a confirmation of distance travelled) or it might be of high importance such as a Stop for a major road crossing.
The roadbook IS NOT a set of pacenotes!
There will be many significant road features that ARE NOT detailed in each waypoint-line or between waypoints.
Look where you want to go and you will (probably) go where you are looking…
YOU MUST exercise your experienced judgement to safely ride the route.
Ride no faster than you can safely see ahead. If the average speed in a section is faster than you think safe, SLOW DOWN. Things will open up ahead and you can have a go at achieving the average speed.
If the waypoint notes say “XXKph max”, then that is the maximum speed limit (eg through urban areas).
If the waypoint notes say “XXKph ave” then that is the AVERAGE speed between the GPS timing gates (Richta Control Points - RCPs). Understand the difference!
In particularly difficult sections, the AVERAGE speed requirement will be set quite low (perhaps as low as 10Kph). This doesn’t mean you cant exceed 10Kph, it means if you need to ride faster in order to better clear the difficulty (perhaps as low steep descent) you can, but you need to wait at the bottom to run the clock down before passing the next RCP (gps timing gate)
Anyway, I might be getting ahead of myself here but you now have an understanding of what a roadbook is and how to read it. Strictly disciplined to read it one line at a time, one junction at a time!
What is Rally Navigator?
Rally Navigator is a pc computer app/system that uses the significant computing power available in modern computers to draw information from satellite earth images and Geographic Information System (GIS) datasets in a programme that enables the writing of roadbooks.
The author of the roadbook (me) mouse-clicks on significant points along the route to be mapped. The system calculates the distance between each of the mouse-clicks, saves waypoint information and enables the assembly of tulip diagrams. Once the roadbook is complete, it is saved and can be shared in a number of formats, most usefully to us as a PDF file.
You, the roadbook user do not need to have anything to do with Rally Navigator - unless of course you want to start writing roadbooks for yourself..!
So, we’ve got the hardware and the software, what next?
Taking this step by step, lets get the RRR app into your device of choice. Apple/iphone/iOS first.
Go to the Apple App Store, tap on it, in the search box type Rally Roadbook Reader, tap on it and tap Install.
On Android, at least on this phone, the apps are in Play Store, tap on it, search for Rally Roadbook Reader and install.
Rally Roadbook Reader - the app in action…
There are two details to walk you through now, how to get a roadbook PDF into your smartphone/tablet and displayed in the app, and the functions within the app.
I will tackle these two in that order.
The roadbooks are distributed before the event as PDFs by email. Your Rally Roadbook Reader smartphone/tablet needs to have email access! This means the email address you supply to me needs to be accessible on your RRR device.
To explain, the email addresses I usually use are Yahoo and Wix addresses. The email app on my Android phone is Gmail but i have had it set up to also receive Yahoo and Wix emails.
I am quite happy to send roadbook PDFs to multiple email addresses for event participants as of course access to the documents is kinda crucial…
You can also send my email to yourself at your alternative email addresses.
Here, I will also give the Dropbox location of the roadbook above for you to have a few trial runs with…. I distribute the roadbooks from my Dropbox account which serves as a useful and secure document repository.
Android.
On your Android device, click on the Dropbox link and the document will open.
Download it onto your device then open RRR.
In RRR, tap Download new Roadbook, look in the “recently downloaded documents” and tap on this document.
The PDF will then show up in your RRR app. You might want to organise your roadbooks into files in order to keep documents in an orderly fashion.
Apple.
And for the iPhone/iOS, the process is similar although the details are different…
From the email, tap on the Dropbox link, takes you to the PDF in Dropbox,
On the PDF (second picture) tap on the three dots top right hand corner, tap on Export.
Next page, tap on More, it will give you a full list of places to export the file to, select Rally Roadbook Reader.
The roadbook will appear in your RRR app.
At this point you will probably need to begin organising your RRR app into folders and files…
That is (probably) the difficult bit done!
Inside the RRR app…
The app can work in two ways.
If you turn your phone horizontally, the app displays in what is called “Rally Computer” mode.
The app displays an odometer in the left hand screen which can be advanced by tapping above the number, reduced by tapping below. This is a very useful function for resetting the odometer reading to the roadbook distance when the two numbers are in disagreement (often happens due to geometric differences in distance measurement methods).
The upper centre screen is a GPS-driven speedometer which can be set to Kph or Mph.
The lower centre screen is a clock running to “internet time”
The right hand screen shows a compass heading. If you have ever undertaken any marine navigation, you might be wondering exactly which north the compass works from. I don’t know, but in practice it appears not to make any difference as the indicator is for the direction on leaving a road junction, after which the road can turn in any direction.
If you turn the phone vertically
You get the Rally Computer information plus the roadbook PDF. Scroll it up and down in the usual smartphone manner and tap the screen to lock the display.
Lastly, if you tap the three bars in the top right hand side of the display you get a “utilities” screen
Here you can switch between miles and kilometres, temporarily adjust the odometer calibration and turn off various Rally Computer features.
Other tech devices that can be helpful.
Remote GPS receiver
I have already mentioned the remote GPS receiver, the SkyPro XGPS 160. The GPS receiver chip in your smartphone has its maximum sensitivity vertically up from the plane of the screen. It’s minimum sensitivity is parallel to the screen. Usually on bikes, the phone is mounted on a handlebar mount that holds the phone in an orientation giving best vision to the rider, and almost the worst sensitivity to GPS signals. It is remarkable that the GPS function works as well as it does…
RRR takes data from the GPS chip to run it’s geolocation functions. You might want to consider using a remote GPS receiver….
Addendum: given the RRR takes data continually from the GPS chip inside the phone, that mounting the phone near vertically puts the GPS chip in a most disadvantageous orientation and the GPS chip data drives the RRR odometer, it is reasonable to expect any interruption in reception of GPS signals will lead to under-reading of distance measurements (and consequential speed measurement inaccuracies). This is one of the reasonably foreseeable sources of distance measurement inaccuracies annd one that a remote GPS receiver can be expected to eliminate.
A further consequence of the function of the GPS chip is that it is in constant activation. This puts a significant drain on the battery of the phone. If you are using an old phone, the performance of the battery is likely to be more than somewhat diminished….
USB charger
You are going to need a wired-in USB charger to keep the battery in your RRR phone topped-up. It isn’t a difficult job to wire a USB charger in to the electrical system of your bike - just make sure you run it off a switched live so you dont need to worry about flattening your battery overnight.
Bluetooth remote controller
This is where practicality meets a little bit of luxury. You can control your RRR app with a handlebar mounted Bluetooth controller and scroll the roadbook up and down without taking your hand off the handlebars. These controllers come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes and costs but they all perform the same function. You could be forgiven for believing they all had the same insides to them…. I couldn’t possibly comment! Add a second (or third?) USB charger to keep it fully powered up.
And finally, a handlebar phone mount or some other place to keep you RRR phone safe and visible at all times - you are going to be a great deal of looking at it!
Jonathan.
7 Jan 2026
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