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NOTE 4 (01.05.05): If you
arrived here from an external link you might wish to take a look
at the main pages from my Road Trip
99.
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NOTE 3 (00.01.05): This was used as my "home page" during my
trip around the country and for some time after. It is still up because it has a
few useful mapping tools on it and a bit of history to it. Here you will find
the following:
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NOTE 2: As of
99.08.22 I have discovered that three out of four of my active email accounts
went out of service while I was out of town. This means that any and all email
sent to me during the intervals in which the accounts were down should be
considered lost and should be re-sent to the appropriate account(s). The
intervals of service interruption for the accounts are as follows:
- My UCLink account did not experience any service interruption.
- My Ricochet address is up and running as of 99.09.01.
- "david at davidwoolsey dot
com" is back in service as of 99.09.08.
I am sorry for any inconvenience this must have caused.
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NOTE 1: As of 99.07.02
I have learned that there are two fundamental issues which will prevent me from
doing the (grayed out) remote map retrieval
operations implied by the following document. So this document is not as useful
for me as it might have been but you might find some amusement here.
- There is a problem with having a mobile TCP/IP packet station because the
station will have a fixed IP number but will have a non-fixed geographic
position. When the station moves out of the area for which its IP numbers are
valid then the TCP/IP connection will be broken. The work around is to have an IP
address for each local domain through which one is traveling. This is
impractical because it takes direct contact with the local domain administrator
and a couple of days to set things up (and have them propagate through the
internet). It would also result in a very large number of IP addresses being
assigned to the mobile station.
- There is a shortage of full service TCP/IP packet gateways to the internet.
This seems logical given the first problem -- since TCP/IP packet can not be
used by mobile stations and it is far too slow to be worth while for fixed
stations why bother with it? If only there was a way to automatically assign IP
numbers to mobile stations as needed this would be a useful toy.
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Welcome to David's
During the month of July I'll be taking an extended journey around the lower 48
states and these are my support pages. In principle they should be used by me
each morning to fetch information for the day's riding. Each morning I will
check weather maps and state scale road maps to
determine an appropriate route for the day. After finding an acceptable
approximate route I will check for useful destinations and pick a specific
target. Then I'll reference these pages remotely to acquire "terminal guidance"
maps of the destination. A typical destination might be a hot spring or a
campground.
OK, so how am I going to do all this remotely? Like this...
- Garmin GPS III mapping Global Positioning System receiver
- Apple MessagePad 2100
- Kenwood TH-D7A ham radio with built in TNC and APRS
- Various interconnection cables
- Get up and brew a cup of tea.
- Set up D7A radio and connect it to the MP2000 via serial cable and establish a packet radio connection to a local TCP/IP gateway.
- Download weather image(s) from these links for the areas through which I'll be riding.
- Texas A&M Weather Interface (1k text). This is the best one for what I'm doing.
- Severe Weather Watch Graphic (short text + 10k image)
- Severe Weather Watch Text Summary (short, variable length, text)
- UM WeatherNex (7k text + thumbnails)
- Weather Fax Image (20k b/w image only)
- Temperatures (26k text, 15k imagemap)
- Precipitation (35k image only)
- radar (3k text, 25k imagemap leading to more images)
- visual (8k text, 60k image)
- forecast (25k image only)
- Weather Underground (31k text, 15k imagemap) These are the smallest images and are Newton friendly.
- radar (10k image only)
- temperature (15k image only)
- visibility (15k image only)
- Consult road and radio relay maps. These can be either ordinary paper road maps acquired from service stations as needed or, more likely, electronic (Built into the GPS III, and constructed by me from USGS and TIGER data and stored in the MP2000 using Adam Tow's Mapper Newton package).
- Select intermediate waypoints and terminal destination based on the mornings's weather intelligence gathering and the availability of a radio repeater with TCP/IP access (so that this procedure is possible on the next morning).
- Retrieve "terminal guidance" maps from the pages listed below.
- Connect D7A radio to GPS III via serial cable to enable APRS tracking (see below).
The Road Trip '99 Map Getter Tool
Is a very useful tool that I have constructed for getting maps in the field from
the TIGER map server. It plots maps with any of my data point sets on them
including Hot Springs, Craters, and Speed Traps. It is very Newton friendly.
The Multiple Mapper Tool is a variation on the Map Getter Tool that will allow
fetching of multiple maps into different windows. This tool is useful for
getting a selection of layers all at once. It is not as Newton friendly as the
plain Map Getter.
List of Hot Spring Maps By State
This is an index (14k text) of state maps and sub-indecies. The state maps are of
different sizes depending on the state. They do not show small streets and
access roads.
Accessible through the above link are the individual hot spring maps. These are
0.1 degree squares centered about the spring rendered as 400x400 pixels (about
8k in size each). These maps show all details available including dirt roads.
Access to these maps is through the individual state map pages.
Unlabeled Map of All USGS Hot Springs In The Lower 48
Smaller version of the Unlabeled Map of All USGS Hot Springs In The Lower 48.
Labeled Map of All USGS Hot Springs In The Lower 48
Smaller version of the Labeled Map of All USGS Hot Springs In The Lower 48.
This is a large map of the lower 48 states showing the locations of all the USGS
listed hot springs. The map is plotted without labels and is about 30k in size.
List Of Crater Maps In The Lower 48
The individual crater maps are 0.2 degree squares centered about the crater
rendered as 400x400 pixels. These maps show all details available including dirt
roads.
Unlabeled Map of All Craters In The Lower 48
Smaller version of the Unlabeled Map of All Craters In The Lower 48.
Labeled Map of All Craters In The Lower 48
Smaller version of the Labeled Map of All Craters In The Lower 48.
This is a large map of the lower 48 states showing the locations of all the USGS
listed "crater" geographic objects. The map is plotted with, or without, crater
labels and is about 26k in size.
Speed Trap Maps By State
Unlabeled Map of All Speed Traps In The Eastern USA
Smaller version of the Unlabeled Map of All Speed Traps In The Eastern USA.
Unlabeled Map of All Speed Traps In The Western USA
Smaller version of the Unlabeled Map of All Speed Traps In The Western USA.
These are state sized maps of speed traps derived from The Speedtrap Registry web pages. They are
simply unlabeled points on a map for use as navigational aids.
Another useful link is the USGS Geographic Names
Information Server (GNIS). Unfortunately the Latitude and Longitude format
that this server spits out is degrees, minutes, and seconds while the TIGER
Mapping Service wants decimal degrees.
During the time that the D7A is not hooked up to the MP2000 it will be hooked up
to the GPS III so that it will transmit my current position, and perhaps a short
message, via the Automatic Position Reporting System. If you have a java capable
browser and you want to know where I am you can try to find me on the APRS.net page. I will have a motorcycle
icon and my call sign is KF6WXN.
If you want to know where I am and have a web browser that handles java you can
load the Java APRS applet and try to find
me on a map of the USA. Hint: I'm the motorcycle.
Another item that I'll be taking with me is a ("cheap-o") QuickTake 200 digital
camera and a handful of SmartMedia cards. During the course of my travels I'll
be sending the cards with photos of my travels back for posting on the Road Trip '99 Photo Pages. This should hopefully
happen at least once a week so keep checking back for more.
The quality of the pictures that this camera produces is not very high so don't
expect too much here.
Oh yeah, one last thing. These pages were originally constructed with the
consideration of low speed (best case = 9600 baud with 1200 typical)
connections, from the middle of nowhere via packet radio, to a Newton MP2100, so
that's why they are somewhat spare in places.
If you are a ham operator you may find me monitoring 146.520 MHz and/or the
usual APRS channel at 144.390 (via APRS of course!). Others may send email to me
at "david at davidwoolsey dot com" and I'll read it when I return (drat
that it can't be gotten to via packet/IP!).
Back to Road Trip '99 main page or top home page.
