[NLRS] Grid map graphics again?

Mon Oct 18 10:58:18 EDT 2010

Bruce and Jerry and others who might be interested,

The "challenge" of this is to find the desired map data in 
drawing system that is "scalable" and that usually means that 
all of the lines (political borders, natural features such as 
rivers, manmade features such as roads, etc.) are available in a 
"vector" form and, as Jerry noted, finding "the data" in that 
form is a challenge...many map databases do not provide "closed" 
boundaries such as the outline of the limits of a city, or a 
county or even states and countries...or showing the varying 
width of a river, the boundary of a lake, etc.

My learning experience in getting a certificate in Geographic 
Information Systems (GIS) from Elmhurst College a few years back 
was very interesting and further highlighted a lot of the 
"challenges" above.

The software used in that program was ESRI's ArcGIS suite which 
was quite powerful in what it could do, importing what were 
referred to as "Shapefiles", many of which were available in the 
'public domain'. For non-educational use, it is quite an 
expensive software package. As a student in the program, I was 
able to use an educational version that had MOST of the 
capabilities of the software suite but the license for the 
educational version from the college expired after one year so 
my capability to use that is also "expired" (though I could 
possibly approach the professor in charge of the program to see 
if I could use the computers in the Geography Lab on campus, but 
that would only help me).

The Figure 1 map of Grid Squares that were active by fixed 
stations with color indicating "ranges" of counts of fixed 
stations that was in the Results article for the 2009 UHF 
Contest was made using that software. I did have to generate 
shapefile that defined the Grid Boundaries which was a slight 
challenge but one that I managed to overcome. Once I set that 
up, though, "mapping" counts of stations by Grid Locator was as 
easy as putting the data in a Spreadsheet with Grid Square in 
one column and the count in the next column and "linking" the 
Spreadsheet to the map file set.

One possible "solution" if anyone wanted to TRY ArcGIS would be 
to purchase a copy of ESRI's "GIS Tutorial 1: Basic Workbook, 
Fourth Edition" book which includes a DVD containing a "trial 
version" of the software (and I believe a little less capable 
than the Educational version) and a CD of data BUT the license 
is only good for 180 days. It IS, however, latest version of 
ArcGIS, version 10 (I worked with version 9.x in the certificate 
program). It is available online at a bit of a discount from 
ESRI's list price (and there are also GIS Tutorial 2 and 3, 
which include the software and similar 180 day licenses if one 
wanted to "go farther"). I saved the set of shapefiles that I 
used and would be happy to share them.

I've also noted that ESRI has a product that is called ArcGIS 
Explorer that is reportedly a "Free" viewer but I don't know if 
it has capability to import and display data from a Spreadsheet 
or if it will only show "static" data (though I would expect it 
to have zoom in and out capability, though possibly on screen 
only).

73, JK

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dr. Gerald N. Johnson" <geraldj at weather.net>
To: <nlrs at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 02:07
Subject: Re: [NLRS] Grid map graphics again?

>
>
> Grids and maps are handiest when the drawing system works in 
> degrees and
> fractions. Or degrees minutes seconds. The software I created 
> for
> Frese-Notis weather over the past 20 or more years works that 
> way and is
> driven by a command file. Maps it draws are at 
> www.weather.net. Drawing
> boundaries of grids in its command structure is a line that 
> says "draw
> line 44,-60 to 44,-120" for horizontal lines, and "draw line 
> 20,-90 to
> 56,-90 for a north south line. In my software I don't allow 
> Mercator map
> projections, only polyconic and Lambert and a couple more 
> esoteric
> projections for world wide maps. I've collected data for state 
> and
> county boundaries, one source was a US DOT CD. Also collected 
> data for
> elevations which is the radar map background at weather.net 
> from a USGS
> source for a few bucks on a dozen CD-ROM. Its a lot easier to 
> get grid
> boundaries on a projected map with the program that projected 
> the map.
> My program also does text, in English, or other languages 
> using roman
> letters, but also does Kanji, JIS, and shift JIS for Japanese 
> and those
> fonts also do roman and Cyrillic. It will fill a block with 
> color too
> with curved boundaries of a projection or straight boundaries 
> of screen
> space locations. But its not a program publicly available.
>
> I've drawn maps with Autocad sometimes to collect the boundary 
> data when
> I needed a closed boundary and the available data wasn't made 
> of
> sequentially connected lines. Had I a generic public domain 
> drawing
> program where I could have extracted the line data from a .DXF 
> file it
> would have worked as well, I didn't work Autocad hard. Those 
> maps also
> were never display projected.
>
> The crude alternative, is to use grid maps that have been down 
> loadable
> from ARRL and crumcraft, print them, mark with crayon or felt 
> marker,
> then scan for web use. If not scan, shoot a high resolution 
> picture with
> camera or cell phone.
>
> Most any drawing program will use publicly available boundary 
> data and
> create a Mercator projection but I despise that projection and 
> won't
> allow my customers to use it.
>
> Its really tough to use a raster map and to fit grid 
> boundaries to it.
> I'm sure that if I was to root in my data files I could find 
> all the
> state boundaries and county boundaries and draw a US map with 
> Canada and
> with grids marked and identified in a .GIF format that could 
> be ingested
> by GIMP or photo shop. Used to be my program was arbitrarily 
> limited to
> 5000 pixels per line and unlimited lines (limited by available
> memory),but I may have expanded that so that weather details 
> smaller
> than 1 km can be drawn on a nationwide map.
>
> Maps in jpeg tend to be messed up when rescaling the size 
> because jpeg
> is better at compressing continuous pictures than lines. In my 
> program
> once I have the drawing commands gathered (which I probably 
> have for
> states, but not grids) making different sizes is trivial, but 
> takes a
> separate program run for each size. The .gif format is limited 
> to a
> pallet of 256 colors, but my drawing program uses 24 bit color 
> numbers.
>
> KM0T probably has access to one of the engineering GIS 
> programs that
> have been created since I did the software for weather data. 
> They come
> in various complexities, usually with princely prices for 
> creation
> seats, but free viewers.
>
> I've searched some of my archives and uploaded a couple maps 
> to an
> accessible server. These don't have grids yet. I don't know 
> where their
> command files are but could look for them someday. Look at:
> www.geraldj.networkiowa.com/maps
>
> 73, Jerry, K0CQ
>
> On 10/18/2010 1:10 AM, Bruce Richardson wrote:
>>
>>
>> I think this was brought up before but what systems/methods 
>> do
>> some of you use to make images of "grids already worked" 
>> maps?  I
>> know KM0T has some nice ones on his website.  I'm thinking of 
>> .jpg
>> images that I can send along in emails or post on the web.  I 
>> have
>> some skills with GIMP (kinda like photoshop but different 
>> :-) ).
>> So I can do that--but with me it's usually tedious :-) .  Do 
>> any
>> of you use automated systems?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Bruce Richardson W9FZ
>>
>>
>> "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S.
>> Thompson
>>
>>
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