Contents
- Index
Online Mapping
If you have a working internet connection, the 'Online Mapping' tab opens to show an online map covering the entirety of Australia. By default, the map is provided by 'Bing', though other map-providers can be chosen by clicking 'Help > Options > Mapping > Choose Map Provider'. You can also set other map-preferences there as well, and enter your own callsign and home location, which will be used as reference in many other programme functions.
As you move your mouse over the map, a box will follow your mouse-position that shows the current latitude/longitude map-position under the mouse, in decimal degrees. South and West values are negative. If you wish, the mouse-position label can be turned off by clicking 'Help > Options > Mapping > Show Map Mouse-Position'.
If you have any markers or polygons (such as Grid Squares or IOTA bounding boxes) plotted on the map, the text of the mouse-location window will change to show their names. Right-clicking over a marker or a polygon will show a context-menu with a number of commands that allow you to perform a Spatial Query on a table: Query Geocoded Calls, Query Corrected Calls, Query Gazetteer, Query Postcodes, Query IOTA Table, Query SOTA Table, Query DXCC Table, Query Shires Table, Query WWFF Table, Query ARLHS Table, Query WLOTA Table. Note that their function differs whether you have right clicked a marker or a polygon. If you right-click a marker, the Spatial Query will order the selected table by distance, with the position of the marker as the center-point. If you right-click a polygon, the Spatial Query will only return those entities who's position is located within the bounds of the polygon.
When you have some markers or polygons displayed on the map, you can hide or clear the markers by clicking the menu-button 'Markers', and then choosing an option from the further choices that are displayed below. Markers and polygons are stored on 7 different transparent layers, each of which can be controlled individually.
There are 37 different types of markers, and any of them can be assigned to the different map-markers. To change which marker is being used for a particular entity, click 'Help > Options > Markers' or 'Help > Options > POI Markers'. (POI stands for Point Of Interest).
To zoom the map in or out, use the wheel on your mouse. Zoom-values between levels 1 and 14 are enabled. There would be no point allowing a greater level of zoom, as the accuracy of most positions could not be guaranteed. The 'VK Callbook Mapper' programme is designed to work at a level suitable to view towns, cities, and major map features, not the path down someone's back garden. That said, the level of zoom available should be more than adequate for any Amateur Radio functions.
To move the map side to side or up and down, you should left-click the map with your mouse and then drag it in the desired direction. Note that it is impossible to drag the map beyond the 180 degree East meridian. If you wish to see areas west of this, you must zoom out and drag the map to the right.
In the upper-left corner of the Online Map is a simple scale-bar. This can be disabled, if required, by clicking 'Help > Options > Mapping > Show Map Scale-Bar'.
Even if an internet connection is not always available, the Online Map stores a certain amount of map-tiles in its Map Cache when it does have an online connection. Although this cache is not user-controllable, you will no doubt find the maps that it automatically contains useful if there is a temporary break in your internet connection.