Hmm. I've never tried a logging flight. Didn't Air France try
this with a 320 at Mulhouse? And there's that amazing saw
thingy dangling from the heli in one of the Bond movies.
( :-) for the irony challenged)
John
"Dean Wilkinson" wrote in message
m...
AirPlan can plot GPS track data right on an aviation map, or over a
sectional chart. It is also a full blown flight planner and moving
map.
http://www.razorsedgesoft.com/airplan/index.htm
"John Clonts" wrote in message
...
I'm a big fan of logging flights with my handheld gps and plotting them
on
various maps,
for giving maps to friends who I've taken for "fun flights", and
especially
for evaluating my
instrument training and competency.
I use OziExplorer and OziExplorer 3D. Below are some notes I've made
about
the various processes (sorry about the format, it was pasted from a Word
doc)
Also, I posted some examples to alt.binaries.pictures.aviation entitled
"Oziexplorer Examples"
Cheers,
John Clonts
Temple, Texas
N7NZ
Ozi Explorer
------------- Waypoint generation
http://www.navaid.com/CoPilot/
Be sure to include waypoints and airway intersections if desired. Many
waypoints
\are actually considered "reporting points"
important: indicate version 3.0 of Copilot, and "add db to existing
points"
= No
Then convert the copilot database to oziexplorer waypoints using
http://wayhoo.com/index/a/gpsbabel
important: for some reason the generated waypoint file will not be
usable by
oziexplorer. To fix, open the file with wordpad and then just save it.
(must be some cr/lf goofiness or something)
------------- To print:
Printing from oziexplorer directly causes an application error.
Instead, print to a color image (bmp). convert this immediately to a jpg
or
png,
'cause bmp's are huge. (especially if you're going to email it to folks)
------------- Conversions:
The trial/demo version of Oziexplorer can use only bmp's.
pdf-to-bmp: use imagemagic, convert somefile.pdf somefile.bmp
or better, ghostscript:
gs -sDEVICE=pnggray|png16 -r150 -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sOutputFile=DAL_KNEAD.png
DAL_KNEAD.pdf
For some reason approach plate pdfs from myairplane.com convert more
clearly
than those
from AOPA (despite the converse in the adobe reader)
The demo version of Oziexplorer will only use bmp for map. Otherwise
though,
always use
something else because bmps are huge.
------------- Map sources:
---- Sectionals: kyler laird's
http://aviationtoolbox.org/raw_data/...onals/current/
May have to rotate/warp by .5 degree or so to "orthogonalize".
(Registered version of oziexplorer allows multiple reference points)
also see rec.aviation.misc postings marked "AVIATIONTOOLBOX"
Also available at www.myairplane.com
---- Approach plates:
www.myairplane.com (these seem to convert to bmp more clearly than
AOPA's)
www.aopa.org (members only)
---- Civil maps:
yahoo, mapquest, etc
my favorite though is: http://tiger.census.gov/cgi-bin/mapbrowse-tbl. To
get
an
image bigger than 422x359 though, click on "download GIF image", then
manually change
the URL parameters at the end of the URL from "ht=359&iwd=422" to
whatever
you want.
---- Radar Images
The NWS radar city references seem to be from the US Census Gazetteer:
http://www.census.gov/tiger/tms/gazetteer/. Another source for similar
data
though is from USGS Geographic Names Information System ,
http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnis/we...web_query_form. The
latter
is what is used by Wayhoo.
CBAV references seem to be airports as opposed to VORS. Except that the
ones marked '+' are actual radar sites.
------------- Other Topo and Sat Image
http://terraserver.microsoft.com/geographic.aspx
http://www.terrafly.com/TP/advancentry.html
http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp...ude=42.48&long
itude=-71.15
http://www.multimap.com/map/browse.c...2.43&lat=48.88