[aprssig] Aerial or Satellite Photos/Map for APRS Use

[Derek Koonce]

As for a program to stitch pictures together, take a look at ArcSoft's 
Panorama Maker. It allows for tiling of photos and you can adjust the 
match points. It then skews the photo (or de-skew) to make the tiling work.

As for GoogleEarth / GoogleMaps, I read somewhere that they are trying 
to stay 1 to 3 years recent. I know the photo of my work place was 
within the last year.

Derek Koonce
KE6JTP



Scott Miller wrote:
>> Does anyone know of a source of RECENT Aerial/Satellite photos that 
>> could be
>> used as a map ? I believe that Xastir has a way to convert photos to 
>> a map
>> if you can calibrate the photo to known points.
>
> Check what's available through Google Earth / Google Maps, Microsoft's
> mapping system, and the USGS.  In my experience, if you want imagery
> from a particular point in time, unless you get really lucky you just
> have to pay for it.
>
> You could try geoeye.com (formerly Space Imaging, I think) - last time I
> looked at IKONOS imagery, I think it was a few hundred bucks to get
> something from their archives, and in the thousands to acquire new
> images - or at least to get a few attempts to acquire images.
>
> Hmm.. I just found one site that claims it's about $20 per square km at
> 1m resolution, color.  I'm not sure if that's orthorectified or not, and
> I don't know what the minimum purchase is.
>
>> impact. If anyone has any leads I would appreicate it. My last choice 
>> is to
>> set out markers on all four corners I guess then hire a local crop 
>> duster to
>> take me up with a camera, I can then apply the lat/long to the 4 
>> markers and
>> hopefully import it into Xaster or UIView32.
>
> I know little about aerial photography, but I think that for mapping
> purposes, if you want it to be reasonably accurate you need to be able
> to correct for the angle of the picture, effects of terrain, lens
> geometry, and so forth.  Maybe if you could get reasonably high,
> directly over the property, and get a good picture with a long lens it
> wouldn't be as distorted.
>
> I got back about 500 downward-facing images from my balloon flight last
> year and I worked on overlaying them on Google Earth.  It worked well
> enough to see where they were taken, but there was no way to make most
> of them line up well - there was too much tilt and perspective
> distortion, and no way to correct for it with the tools provided.
>
> For some reading on the subject, look up 'photogrammetry' and
> 'orthorectification'.  Wikipedia has articles on both.
>
> Scott
> N1VG
>
>
>
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