[Xastir] Balloon tracking ?

[William McKeehan]

Some great information Jason. I did have everything turned on and found it to
be very handy.

I agree, the TIGER mapfiles were great - in conjunction with GNIS files, I was
able to follow/give verbal information about the location of the balloon very
easily.

I would like to find a way to make the GNIS files quicker; maybe if I could
break them out by county instead of my current state breakdown. Thoughts?

On Thu, May 12, 2005 9:40 pm, Jason Winningham said:
>
> On May 12, 2005, at 11:39 AM, William McKeehan wrote:
>
>> Does anyone use Xastir in tracking balloons?
>
> Yes, and it's great!
>
> some tips:
>
> go to station -> filter display and click until things like altitude,
> distance/bearing, and report age are displayed.  you get an amazingly
> useful cluster of information around the station icon. (this can get
> crowded for everyday use, though.)  for chases, I personally like:
>
> symbol
> callsign
> trail
> course
> speed
> altitude
> all dead-reckoning
> distance/bearing (only useful if you have a GPS)
> last report age
>
>
> assign a tactical call to the balloon, chase vehicles, or any other
> station important to the flight.  this makes 'em stand out,
> _especially_ if you use lowercase letters.
>
> if the flight is in or near a populated area, choose station -> filter
> data -> select tactical calls only, so you see nothing but the balloon
> and other stations you've assigned tactical calls to
>
> turn on TNC logging.  If you're in a vehicle with no internet, you can
> replay the log file once you get home and make nifty maps with
> terraserver/toposerver/tiger/whatever online sources.
>
> The TIGER shapefiles from xastir.tamu.edu work great.  they're not GIS
> precision (and could be awful depending on where you're at, but they've
> been great for me in T-A-G), but they're as good as anything I've seen
> for vehicle navigation purposes.  I like to use the TIGER shapefiles at
> zoom level 90 and lower, and use a set of National Atlas shapefiles at
> zoom level 91 and higher (use map -> map chooser ->properties to
> accomplish this).  I have dbfawks for the National Atlas files, as do
> others, IIRC.  Of course, all this assumes you've got shapefile and
> dbfawk support compiled it.
>
> -Jason
> kg4wsv
>
>
>


-- 
William McKeehan
KI4HDU
Internet: mckeehan at mckeehan.homeip.net
http://mckeehan.homeip.net