[TowerTalk] HFTA data files

[Kevin Normoyle]

Jim K9YC mentioned google earth for getting terrain profiles.

Here's a site that draws a terrain profile between two points. It uses a 
Google maps api. If I was a software guy, I'd know more about whether 
the api could be used to generate the ray info HFTA needs. Minimally a 
bunch of profiles could be graphed and data extracted by eye.

http://topocoding.com/

You can specify lat/long for your antenna, and then click on the map to 
specify directions for the profile.
the profile is a graph. (for our cases, you'll want to zoom in on the 
map closely)

Going forward, it makes sense that we should get HFTA data from google 
maps or Google Earth, rather than say the NED files? The GE data is 
getting more and more resolution every year, so that's the right path to 
be on ??

Be interesting to have some discussion on this, or more info from 
people. From my quick Google search I don't think this has been cracked 
yet for GE.

(i'm in the middle of a tower location mental debate, so this has caught 
my eye)

I guess everyone knows you can get contour lines in Google Maps now. 
Click on Terrain button.
zoom in to a a couple miles. Nice.

-kevin
ke64ad