Sunday 22 April 2012

I can see your house from here...

Thanks to Google, the simplest way to find the coordinates of an arbitrary landmark (e.g., your buddy's house) is to use GeoSearch on Google Maps. Just type in the zip-code (or post code), or a name/description of the landmark, and Google's search engine will help you locate it on the map in seconds, anywhere in the world. iNavCalc's Google Map interface has an integral GeoSearch dialog, making it simple to discover and add such custom waypoints to your route. By contrast, most aviation navigation planning software tools only allow you to search the aviation databases to find waypoints (airfields, navaids, reporting points, etc). You have to add custom waypoints by first determining their coordinates (e.g., via Google Maps!, outside the tool), then manually typing the coordinates into the software.

Just another reason to add iNavCalc to your toolkit (and of course you can always transfer your iNavCalc routes to/from any other software which supports the GPX protocol)....

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