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Old 03-14-2004, 08:06 AM
  #6  
phantom4099
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Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Brandon, SD
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Default RE: Online Aerial Photo/maps Free?

Well my other hobby is GPS stuff (you guys may find www.geocaching.com interesting), and what I use for free aerial/topo map downloads is USAphotomap ( www.jdmcox.com it downloads the aerial photos/ topo's from Terra server and stores them on your computer for offline viewing). Not sure how much use you guys will have with it since you need to know the coordinates for what your looking for. I guess you can get that from other places like www.topozone.com, or any map software you may own (Microsoft Streets and trips is fairly cheap ($20), and can provide you with the cords if you know the general area).

I also like the software because I can hook my GPSr up to it and download/upload my waypoint/routes/ tracks and see where I have been, I can also hook it to a laptop and have real time tracking displayed on the aerial photos/topo maps. It also has a funtion that allows you to measure distances (actually is creating a route), this is great if you need to know if a feild is large enough to fly in.

I also like that I don't have to keep downloading maps every time I zoom in or out. It downloads 1 meter/pixel photos (as close as you can get), and you can zoom those out to 8 meter/pixel, after that you can (but not needed) download 8 m/pixel images that zoom out to 64 m/pixel (at this zoom level 1 mile x 1 mile areas are smaller than a pencil eraser on my 17in, 800 x 600, monitor). The topo maps you only have to download them once for each area. So what that is saying is you only have to download one or two (second is optional) set of maps to have the full zoom available from Terra servers website (its ALLOT easier than I made it sound).

Wyatt W.
Sorry, about the spellings/ English use, its late and I am tired (and this keyboard is driving me nuts).