[Talk-ca] Amateur Radio Maps...

[Connors, Bernie (SNB)]

I am not sure if this will help but Natural Resources Canada provides some free online tools for converting lat, lon to UTM:

http://www.geod.nrcan.gc.ca/tools-outils/index_e.php

--
Bernie Connors, P.Eng
Service New Brunswick
(506) 444-2077
45°56'25.21"N, 66°38'53.65"W
www.snb.ca/geonb/

-----Original Message-----
From: Colin McGregor [mailto:colin.mc151 at gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, 2011-12-13 16:41
To: talk-ca
Subject: Re: [Talk-ca] Amateur Radio Maps...

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 2:20 PM, Stewart C. Russell <scruss at gmail.com> wrote:
> If anyone's confused about what these maps would look like, I have some examples here: http://glaikit.org/2011/12/11/not-really-getting-the-azimuthal-equidistant-projection-right/
>
> They were made with the not-exactly free AZ_PROJ, a utility written entirely in PostScript.

Okay, I have a pert of the answer here, the May and June 1979 issues
of Byte Magazine, with a two part article on map making. So, I have
the source code (written in BASIC, sigh) that will take a latitude /
longitude and turn that into an X / Y point to be plotted. In other
words I can now look at the math and logic of what needs be be done in
the transformation...

> For a great (but non-free) example of a grey line (day/night) map, see http://pskreporter.info
>
> Cheers
>  Stewart
>
> On 2011-12-12, at 9:23, Colin McGregor <colin.mc151 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Last Saturday I was at a party co-hosted by Richard Weait (thanks),
>> where the topic of maps for amateur radio use came up.
>>
>> A topic that has been of interest to me is amateur radio and disaster response.
>>
>> So, I am looking for software that will generate two maps from Open
>> Street Map data:
>>
>> - An azimuthal equidistant projection map for any arbitrary latitude / longitude
>> - A day and night map (ie: what parts of the world are CURRENTLY in
>> sunshine / darkness)
>>
>> So, what makes the requirement for the above a little tough?  I want
>> the software to be under the GPL (or some other open license) so it
>> can be redistributed without issue. I want it for Linux (so the OS to
>> support the application can also be redistributed without issue). I
>> want the application to run stand-alone (so if there is a problem with
>> the internet connection I don't want the application to suddenly
>> become useless). The data for this can not be more than a few MB at
>> most (but then this shouldn't be an issue, given that road, rail, land
>> use data is irrelevant for these apps, all that is needed is
>> continental outlines, MAJOR lakes, rivers, islands and cities).
>>
>> So, why the interest in these maps?
>>
>> Many amateur radio antenna are directional (doing a better job of
>> receiving (or transmitting) a signal in one particular direction).
>> With an azimuthal equidistant projection map done for your location,
>> you can draw a line from the center of the map to the location you are
>> interested in and that will instantly tell you the direction to adjust
>> your directional antenna. This is static map, as in you generate the
>> map once for a given latitude / longitude you are effectively done.
>>
>> High frequency radio signals can refract off the ionosphere allowing
>> very long range communications with low power transmitters. What
>> frequencies refract well depends on a number factors, including
>> sunshine / darkness. So knowing that the place you want to talk to is
>> in darkness is useful. So, a day night map would have to be dynamic,
>> being updated say once per minute ...
>>
>> Anyone with ideas as to where I could / should turn for the above?
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Colin McGregor
>> VE3ZAA
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Talk-ca mailing list
>> Talk-ca at openstreetmap.org
>> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca

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