I for one would love it. I love fiddling around with charts and waypoints when I am not paddling. It seems like the .wpt format is fairly standard - at least with the software I've been messing around with. I'd love to to have a nice waypoint, and if possible scanned chart, exchange. Obviously, I lot of people like to keep their waypoints somewhat secret for fear of their favorite camping spot getting out to us riff-raff, but there are waypoints that would be great to distribute like put-ins and take-outs, worthwhile sites, reefs, beaches etc. One fun little resource is: http://maps.nationalgeographic.com/topo/search.cfm National Geographic purchased Topo! who make a series of topographic CD-ROMs. I own the BWCA and Apostle Island CD's and have been pleased with them. Anyway, you can download some interesting waypoints from this service they call the "Map Exchange" but I believe (I'm not sure about this but could check into it) the data is in a proprietary format. Some examples just from my region are the Superior Watertrail, Apostle Island Beaver Dams, BWCA camp sites and portage routes, Apostle Islands Campsites, Superior Forest XC Ski Trails. The data seems to all come from open sources, so if it is in a proprietary format on their site, I believe we could convert them to a more commonly used format if we started an exchange. I have also played around a bit with GPS and mapping software such as GPS Utility, OziExplorer, Fugawi and GPSys (for Mac). I am not sure which one I like best or which one calibrates scanned maps most efficiently. I'd love to hear some opinions. Almost all of the aforementioned programs function in a limited demo or sharware mode, so no need to purchase to try them out. LINKS: http://www.gpsy.com/index.html (Mac software) http://www.gpsu.co.uk/ (Software) http://www.oziexplorer.com/ (Software) http://www.fugawi.com/ (Software) http://www.gpspositioner.nl/ (Software) http://www.topografix.com/data.asp (Huge US waypoint data sets, no idea how to use them) http://maps.nationalgeographic.com/topo/search.cfm (Waypoint, chart and software) http://vancouver-webpages.com/peter/index.html (GPS info page, very exstensive) -Patrick At Friday, 24 May 2002, "Evan Dallas" <Evan_Dallas_at_notes.ntrs.com> wrote: >I have an idea that may or may not be practical, but I'm wondering whether >other Paddlewisenheimers would be interested in some sort of organized way >of exchanging waypoints for seakayaking. [SNIP] *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Sat May 25 2002 - 03:19:15 PDT
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