| BeamFinder inside: The world-wide Maidenhead grid locator map The 2540 x 1761 pixel grid locator map is certainly BeamFinder's most eye-catching feature. It scrolls to any place in the world displaying elevation data, national borders and, of course, grid locators. This screen map is a project within a project and it is not finished yet (see the right hand side of the above graphics displaying the Earth at night, to be used in future versions of BeamFinder). When launching the BeamFinder project, b/w grid maps were already available from the author's QTH_LOC software which was published for Atari ST computers in the 1980s. Now there was a requirement of adding geographical regions not yet considered by QTH_LOC, i.e. the good old Atari ST was temporarily moved from the attic into my shack to become part of the BeamFinder project. The colour shadings were finally implemented by using a Macintosh computer and I am grateful to the Living Earth Inc. and the NOAA National Geophysical Data Center for providing the corresponding satellite data. However, re-sizing and re-calculating the satellite data was a major effort to match BeamFinder's map projection. See Japan and the Korean Peninsula in the graphics on the left: the colour and elevation information originates from satellite data, the black lines outlining the sea coast however originate from the Atari ST. There was indeed a major discrepancy between this two databases - but I think, it looks okay now, doesn't it? | |