[Xastir] OT: Best source of road elevation data?

[Curt, WE7U]

On Mon, 28 Aug 2006, Curt, WE7U wrote:

> On Sun, 27 Aug 2006, David Flood wrote:
>
> > Since a lot of people that use Xastir also work with other mapping data /
> > programs, I thought I'd ask a question about road elevation data.  Replies
> > should probably be off-list to davidf4 at mindspring.com
> >
> > I'm part of a group that coordinates and provides support and Ham Radio
> > communications for bike rides.  For a ride that took place last week, I used
> > Topo for the elevation and climbing data.  Based on the feedback I got, that
> > data was totally useless and less than 10% accurate since it appears that
> > Topo uses the true terrain rather than the elevation of the road which is
> > often much smoother than the terrain.
> >
> > So, I now need to find a better source of data and an inexpensive (or
> > preferably free) program to make road elevation profiles for a given route.
> >
> > Any suggestions / ideas?
>
> The only sources I can think of would be these:
>
>     USGS topo's
>     USGS DEM's
>     County GIS data (probably the most accurate for your purposes)

Forget to say, if you're going to be messing with a bunch of GIS
data you might investigate GRASS as the GIS program.  It has a bit
of a learning curve, but you'd be able to import data from a lot of
sources and use it directly, or transform it for use by other
programs like Xastir.  It's open-source and uses several of the same
libraries as Xastir.

--
Curt, WE7U.   APRS Client Comparisons: http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
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