Mapping Software
 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
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 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 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 "river.est".
Choose any suitable folder on your computer.
Start Download
Associated Links
Microsoft Streets & Trips
Garmin GPS Products
National Marine Electronics
Association
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