Creating Custom Topographic Maps for your Hand Held GPS Unit - Part 4

This is Part 4 of a multi-part series on creating custom topographic maps for your hand held mapping GPS unit. For previous posts click one of the following:
Creating Custom Topographic Maps for your Hand Held GPS Unit - Part 1
Creating Custom Topographic Maps for your Hand Held GPS Unit - Part 2
Creating Custom Topographic Maps for your Hand Held GPS Unit - Part 3

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Creating Custom Topographic Maps
for your Hand Held GPS Unit - Part 4

Working with GPSMapEdit

In the previous posts we downloaded terrain and water data from the USGS servers (Post #2) and manipulated our terrain data to give us shapefiles containing contour lines at 20', 100' & 200' intervals (Post #3). Now we are going to take those files and assemble them into a .mp map file. (Just a word of warning, this is going to be a rather involved post.) Our goal is to take our downloaded data and assemble it to create something that looks like this:

Now THAT looks like a map!

Continue reading after the jump to start assembling your own map!

It is January 5th and already I'm dreading 2011

Hi all. Just a quick update here. School is getting back into the swing of things and this quarter is shaping up to be particularly nasty. I'm thinking that the academic adviser at Strayer was full of beans having me take a 400 level course before taking a 300 level one. I guess I'll find out how fast I can tread water eh?

300 courses before 400? No! Dive right in! You'll be fine.

I'm planning on finishing the next post in my GPS Map series soon, this weekend most likely. Post #4 deals with assembling shapefiles in GPSMapEdit and it's going to be a whopper of a post. GPSMapEdit is a great little program once you work through all of its eccentricities but it certainly has a bunch of those. For instance it has no New command. You cannot create a blank file, you also cannot save a blank file. This makes creating a blank map template a bit more difficult.

Anyway I'll be finishing that post and moving on to Post #5 in which I'll explain how to get your custom map into Garmin MapSource. I'm also going to create a quick and dirty outline for general reference that doesn't include as much explanation.

Another plan that I'm kicking around is taking a Saturday and doing a day hike down at Raccoon Creek State Park in PA. I want to grab a GPS track of the trail I hiked in November 2009. Of course my ability to do that depends heavily upon my course load. Library here I come!

So, anyway look for the rest of my GPS Mapping series and hopefully another RCSP trail report coming up soon! Take care.

~Occasional Hyker

Kudos to Ka-Bar

About this time last year a really good friend of mine gave me a gift. It was completely unexpected, in fact it knocked my socks off. He gave me a Becker BK2 Campanion knife made by Ka-Bar Knives, Inc. This knife is awesome to say the least. (Thanks W! I know you'll read this so I just want to say that I love and appreciate this knife quite a bit!) It weighs in at about one pound has a 5.25" length blade and an over-all length of 10.5".

Trust me, it's a big knife.

The BK2 Campanion (yes, it is Campanion, not companion) is one of the most comfortable fixed blade knives I've used. Even though it is heavy the handle is contoured just right and fits in the hand perfectly giving you control and confidence. The back of the blade is 1/4" thick allowing you to use the knife as a wedge, beating on it with a bludgeon if necessary. The knife is sharp enough for field dressing a carcass but also strong enough to break a joint when quartering. It just is a great knife.

But that's not the kudos that I want to give Ka-Bar. Please keep reading after the jump!