Topband: Google Earth Placemark for AB7E on QRZ.com

[David Gilbert]

If you check the listing for AB7E on QRZ.com, you'll see a link under 
the biography section to a Google Earth placemark for my QTH.  Google 
Earth is a free and very cool 3D mapping program based upon satellite 
photos, and in my case the photos for this area are pretty recent 
(winter of 2006) and fairly high resolution.  Our home is still under 
construction and I can easily identify objects a couple of feet in size 
that are strewn around the lot..

Anyway, I created the placemark for my QTH in Google Earth, named it 
"AB7E", then saved it as a .kmz file to a separate folder on my hard 
computer.  Next I uploaded that file to Yahoo Briefcase, a free file 
hosting service on Yahoo.  The resulting URL for that the .kmz file is 
pretty lengthy so I converted it at www.tinyurl.com to a shorter URL and 
added the result to the biography portion of my listing on QRZ.com.  If 
you have Google Earth already loaded on your computer (you should try it 
if you don't), clicking on the link under my listing at QRZ.com will 
bring up the application and visually fly you to my QTH.  Much cooler 
than using grid squares to figure out where the other person lives.

For what it is worth, I made the longest distance QSO with 3B9C on 160m 
from here in southern Arizona during their 2004 DXpedition by stringing 
a two element wire yagi across the canyon you can see higher up to the 
west of my house, although at that time I had to do it from my vehicle 
parked on the road.  The antenna worked great until the forest service 
made me take it down ...

Dave  AB7E