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Mapping Software

 Microsoft Streets & Trips Streets & Trips is a mapping application sold by the Microsoft Corporation. It contains a large map of Canada and the United States showing landmarks such as mountains, rivers, lakes, railways lines, and roads. It features a route planner to find and schedule stops, set route and driving preferences, plus calculate and optimize a driving route. It also contains a search function whereby you may search for cities, airports, businesses, attractions, and other points of interest including any point on the map specified by latitude and longitude.
 
 
GPS Receivers

GPS receivers take in data from the Global Positioning System, a group of 24 satellites orbiting the Earth. The 24 satellites that make up the GPS space segment orbit the earth at about 12,000 miles. They are constantly moving, making two complete orbits in less than 24 hours. These satellites are travelling at speeds of roughly 7,000 miles an hour. GPS satellites are powered by solar energy. They have backup batteries onboard to keep them running in the event of a solar eclipse, when there's no solar power. Small rocket boosters on each satellite keep them flying in the correct path. The satellites were developed and launched by the United States Department of Defense at a cost of more than $12 billion. This system is the most advanced navigational technology ever developed. It can provide precise latitude, longitude, bearing, altitude, time, sunrise, sunset, plus speed and direction to a moving receiver anywhere on Earth, in any weather, at any time. There are no subscription fees or setup charges to use GPS.
 
There are some limitations to the Global Positioning System. All civilian GPS receivers are subject to degradation of position and velocity because of Selective Availability (S/A), an operational mode imposed by the American Department of Defense that degrades civilian signals for security purposes. Consequently, the accuracy of civilian GPS receivers may be degraded by up to 100 meters (330 feet). SA was intended to prevent military adversaries from using the highly accurate GPS signals. The government turned off SA in May 2000, which improved the accuracy of civilian GPS receivers. GPS receivers equipped with WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) capability can improve accuracy to less than 3 meters on average. Also, because a GPS receiver must track data from at least three satellites at once, it must have a direct line of sight to the sky when used.
 
To work with Streets & Trips, a GPS receiver must be compliant with NMEA (National Marine Electronics Association) standards, and its input/output format (interface) must be set to support NMEA 0183 version 2.0 or later.
 
 
Photo Location Accuracy

 Garmin eTrex handheld GPS Garman GPS receivers are currently available in Canada for as low as $179. Latitude and longitude coordinates given with each photo are derived from one of these small handheld receivers. The coordinates are NOT accurate to within 3 meters. However, using this software and these coordinates you should be able to easily locate and drive within walking distance of each photo location.
 
Streets & Trips is mainly intended for route planning so the road maps are reasonably accurate. However, when it comes to railway line locations the software displays some glaring errors and is not reliable. Natural landmarks such as rivers are shown in some cases but disappear when you zoom the map. The coordinates supplied were tested in Streets & Trips version 2001. They have not been tried on any other version of the software. Hopefully later versions of this product will contain less errors. For now, the road map display is workable.
 
 
Download of Map File

For this downloadable file to be useful you will need Microsoft Streets & Trips installed on your computer. To save the map file to your computer click "Download Now" below then choose "Save this file to disk". You will be asked where you wish to save a file named "mission.est". Choose any suitable folder on your computer.

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Associated Links

Garmin GPS Products
 
National Marine Electronics Association

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