[Xastir] topo maps

[Curt, WE7U]

On Mon, 1 Mar 2004, Matt Werner wrote:

> Ok.  I've checked out the first link but it pretty much just leads me to the
> second link.  The second link, the deli, has a lot of 24k DRG maps, but
> without the collar.  From what I can learn, it appears that the collar
> contains the coordinates of the map.

It contains the human-readable coordinates, but not the
machine-readable coordinates.  For those you'll need at least a
portion of an fgd file and the remaining info hidden in geotiff tags
inside the tiff image.


> I've tried the mapfgd.pl script (mapfgd.pl
> /usr/local/share/xastir/maps/topo/mn/*) and while it doesn't return any
> errors, it also doesn't generate any .fgd files.  Xastir sees my .tif files
> in the map chooser but won't load the maps.

That script only works with the USGS files and naming system.  If
someone has cropped the collars, they've likely also changed the
filenames on everything.  The script probably is not going to work
for you.


> Are these maps usable, or will I need to bite the bullet and buy the DRGs (I
> have searched and searched but can't find them elsewhere)?

Depends on where you want them for.  I have all of Washington state,
part of Oregon (mostly the northern 1/3? or 1/2?), and one or two
CD's for ID and MT.  Other people probably have most of other
states.  If we could find a nice repository for these, we could put
them out there for everybody.  It would take me a while to upload
what I have, but I could do it over some months and feel good for
helping.

Perhaps the map server project that Steve Dimse is working on could
accept such maps, or perhaps James Jefferson's aprsworld site?  It'd
be a largeish set of maps for the U.S.  We'd need to get Toporama
maps for Canada on there too.  Then there's the satellite images
that people might want.  Then the DLG's in SDTS format.  It goes on
and on.

Some of the sites that I used to download maps from have dried up,
turned commercial, or have severely restricted download speeds for
free downloads now.  It'd be nice to have a site where we could
stash free maps for everybody, which wouldn't disappear in the
future.

--
Curt, WE7U			    archer at eskimo dot com
Arlington, WA, USA		http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
"Lotto:    A tax on people who are bad at math." -- unknown
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