[OT] Maps

I'm getting a couple of companies of gropos and have been looking for a place
to use them. Lo and behold, you can get free topographic maps online at
www.topozone.com. Maps come in small, medium and
large--"large" is about 750K.  I've just downloaded a 1:25,000 scale
map which covers the area around my parents' farm, converted one tile to bmp
and expanded it, and now have a topo map for an area about 300m

> Laserlight wrote:

What a useless site. All they have a ferner maps.:)

On Fri, 06 Apr 2001 20:46:55 -0700 Jaime Tiampo
<fugu@spikyfishthing.com> writes:
> Laserlight wrote:

Earth can be a 'foreign' place sometimes. 8^)

> Glenn M Wilson wrote:

> >What a useless site. All they have a ferner maps. :)

> to bmp and expanded it, and now have a topo map for an area about

Ha! I get it. When I first parsed it I thought he was talking about some form
of map projection.

I'm slow tonight.

On Fri, 06 Apr 2001 22:00:03 -0700 Ndege Diamond <nezach@earthlink.net>
writes:
> to bmp and expanded it, and now have a topo map for an area about

Isn't the ferner projection the ones the Kravak use?

On Fri, 06 Apr 2001 21:56:22 -0700 Jaime Tiampo
<fugu@spikyfishthing.com> writes:
> Glenn M Wilson wrote:

There is always the USGS.

And the Russians will sell you maps of the parts of the rest of the world
that they have made - we use them a lot at work over certain parts of
the world where our stuff is older or doesn't exist.

> I'm getting a couple of companies of gropos and have been looking for

If you have access to a GIS package, you can get digital elevation models of
the US from
http://edc.usgs.gov/doc/edchome/ndcdb/ndcdb.html

These allow you to build a 3D model of the topography. Or you could print out
contours, cut them out of polystyrene, stack them together, and defend your
home town against the Kra'Vak...

All at the precise 1" = 100m scale of DS2...

Just a thought

Just  to confuse everyone - Maps are referred to as large scale, small
scale, and for the undecided some are called medium scale (but not by me...)
but because of the representative fraction (1:100,000; 1:25,000; 1:2 Million;
1:10,000 etc.) is just that (a fraction) if you want a large piece of ground
on a map (Say Global Navigation Chart for the long range transport planes) you
need a small scale map and if you want a small piece of ground (say a 1:25,000
Topographical Line Map for the grunts on the ground) you need to order a large
scale map. Giving a patrol in Stargrunt 2 a 1:1 million map is only slightly
less useful then a map showing the whole planet on a 8.5" x 11" piece of
stock. I mean if they are not already sure which planet they are on...

On Sat, 7 Apr 2001 15:59:46 -0700 Tony Christney <tchristney@home.com>
writes:
> I'm getting a couple of companies of gropos and have been looking for

Glenn made some interesting points. One was:

And as for Op Sec (operational security -
the thing kept the military to tell Defense Mapping about
Grenada until 24-72
hours before hand - "You don't have maps
of Grenada!?!?!")
it can turn the mundane in to chaos if for SBU facts like stock levels or
existence of maps. Ever seen a grid on a tourist map? Sad, almost pathetic.

[Tomb] And another thing - Our military
orienteering gear is marked in mils. Most of the civ maps are not. Try mixing
civilian maps and military compasses or vice versa. Not impossible, by any
means, just annoying. And of course, fire support isn't
too easy to call on the grid-less maps too.
;)

On Mon, 20 Jan 2003 11:10:12 -0500 "Thomas Barclay" <kaladorn@magma.ca>
writes: <snip>
> [Tomb] And another thing - Our military

Hypothetically two different grids (Say Army and Marine) could result in
friendly fire casualties if the grids are close but not the same.

Of course pilots in CAS missions are another ball of wax.

Pilots don't use 1:25K, 1:50K or even 1:100K TLM (Topographic Line Maps) that
the ground guys like but when planning missions they use TPC (Tactical
Pilotage Chart) at 1:500,000 or at best JOG (Joint Operations
Graphics) at 1:250,000 - oh did I mention that AIR JOGS are in feet and
miles and Ground JOGS are in Meters and KM's? There WERE (past tense)
"Combined" graphics with mixed measurement units but nobody liked them so they
were discontinued. So much for the "joint" part...

Gracias,