GOM - the Global Overlay Mapping System

A Guided Tour of the Overlay Mapping System

This tour provides a quick guide of the facilities. For full instructions on how to use the Global Mapper, click HERE. This tour is designed to be read whilst looking at the Global Mapper Screen. Open both windows on your monitor, or print out this topic before opening the Global Mapper.

Start the Global Mapper by clicking on its icon. The screen that opens in front of you contains 3 areas: To the left, the navigation area where you can easily select the map required, to the top a line of buttons that turn on or off the map overlays, and the main area of the screen, for the map itself.

Try moving your cursor over the small map of the world. As you travel over any of the 7 continents, they change color, and the display below changes to show a map of the continent that you are currently over. Next, try moving your cursor over the 7 continental buttons - EU, AS, AF, NA, SA, OC, or AN. The upper & lower map-panels change as before, and the text information box updates to tell you how many sub-continental maps are available for that continent. Move your cursor down on to the lower continental map, and initially the text disappears, but as you move your cursor about the map, you will find the 'hot-spots', that show where a subcontinental map can be selected. These are highlighted in green, and show the rough coverage-area of the map. The text-box has more information - the name of the map, and the position of the map boundaries, in order West, East, South, North. It also tells you that if you click now, you will select that map, so try it now, by clicking, and the map wil load.

What you are looking at now in the main area of the screen is the background layer of the map that you just selected, which has little information on it at present. You will notice the sea, and some sea or ocean names. The land mass and country outlines are there too, but more information is needed to make the view interesting. Don't worry - each map has 12 overlays that you can add. These are selected by clicking on any of the 12 larger buttons along the top. Try the one marked 'Country' and instantly the map becomes easier to read, as each country is colored to make it obvious where one starts and another ends. In a lighter color you can also see the region boundaries, which represent counties or provinces of that country. Click on the 'Names' button, and you will see the country names and region names, where available. The country names are in darker text, and use capital letters.

Click on the 'Cities' button, and the city names appear. Note the capital cities, which are bolder than the others, and use a red dot to indicate their exact position. Try moving your cursor on to one of those dots, and look down at the status bar, on the bottom of your screen. There is a lot of information presented. You can find out more about the status bar by clicking HERE, but for now, note how easy it is to get the exact bearing and distance from your QTH.

If you are viewing the map on a smaller monitor, or just want more of the map to be displayed, you might find it useful to turn off the navigation tool bar, on the left of the screen. To do this, click on the 'Tools' button, located to the right of the upper tool bar. The map will re-open without the navigation tool bar, leaving just the overlay controls as before. To select another map, you will have to turn the navigation tool bar back on, by clicking on the 'Tools' button once more.

An extra feature with every map, is the dragable Scale-Bar, which can be turned on and off by clicking on the 'Scale' button, located to the right of the upper tool bar. For more information about this, visit the Scale-Bar help-page, by clicking HERE. Note that the Scale-Bar is only dragable when it is the current top layer. In other words, if you turn it on, then turn on another overlay, you will not be able to drag the Scale-Bar about, as the new overlay takes precendence in the stacking order. To regain control of the Scale-Bar, simply turn it off then on again.

OK, you've reached the end of the introductory tour. For more information, explore the rest of the pages in this Help & Information Guide. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to email me - the address is on the Contact Page.