[aprssig] RE: [nwaprssig] Balloon Tracks on Google Earth

[Herb Gerhardt]

OK, I scrolled down the page that Bill referenced and found those pictures
but I guess I was expecting more!  Especially from Billy Bob.

Now I have been playing with Google Earth since it now has a tie-in with the
Garmin MapSource program.  If you have not played with that feature of
MapSource, you are missing it.  It actually plots all your way points and
tracks from your GPS or any saved file on the Google Earth maps.  Now you
can view your tracks in 3D, tilt it rotated it, zoom in on it, etc.  Pretty
neat stuff.  I have already spent hours and hours viewing my bushwhacking
hiking trips in the Olympic Mountains and am now finally able to get a real
perspective of where I go and what is on the other side of that ridge or
cliff.  You will need one of the Garmin last updates to MapSource in order
to play with this feature.  I use the latest Beta Version 6.12.

I also clicked on Bre's URL below.  Now that zoomed me right in on the
balloon track on a Google Earth map and I can view it in 3D.  Again neat
stuff.  Now I noticed that this map also shows my last file (Waypoints and
Tracks) that I viewed in MapSource (must be from a file on my computer).  So
I really have my GPS data along with the APRS Balloon data on this Google
Earth map.

Now for the punch line, has anyone worked on getting the live APRS data to
show up on a current Google Earth map?  This sure would be the cat's meow of
playing APRS even though you need a high speed internet feed to play with
it.  Sure would be a neat feature though.

So, is such a feature available yet on the NET?  If not, is anyone working
on such a feature or APRS program?  Bill, are you listening?  Hi, hi....
You know me, I am just a user and not smart enough to develop such an
interface but boy would it be a nice interface/feature addition to APRS.

Herb, KB7UVC
NW APRS Group, West Sound Coordinator
Our WEB Site:  http://www.nwaprs.info


> -----Original Message-----
> From: nwaprssig-admin at nwaprs.info [mailto:nwaprssig-admin at nwaprs.info]On
> Behalf Of Bre Pettis
> Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2007 11:16 AM
> To: nwaprssig at nwaprs.info
> Subject: Re: [nwaprssig] Balloon Tracks on Google Earth
>
>
> Hey folks,
>
> Some friends and I attempted to launch a weather balloon with aprs
> action, but we were thwarted by cloud cover.
>
> We did do a tethered test, which is fun to look at in google earth.
>
> It's a kml file, so you need to download google earth and then open
> up the file and you can see what happened.
>
> We also used a cellphone loaded with mologogo software that sent out
> gps data over the cell network...
>
> Check it out with all the details at http://balloon.pbwiki.com and my
> vid about the project is on rocketboom today as well at http://
> rocketboom.com
>
> Bre Pettis
> KE7GRE
>
>