Course Maps & Satellite Images

[Kurt Rahn]

As I've been designing and fine tuning my course for the upcoming event, I made a very interesting discovery: it appears that the height of Google Maps' El Toro satellite photo is incorrectly compressed, so the proportions of runways 34L & 34R look much shorter than they really are. I won't share the boring details of how I figured this out (unless someone is interested), but needless to say, if you're using a satellite image to design future courses at El Toro, use a screen shot of a MapQuest image, not Google Maps.

BTW, I'll make the document I'm using available to people so they can use it to design future courses. I overlaid a grid of 10' squares on top of the satellite photo, which makes it easier to approximate distances.

[Jeff Cawthorne]

I found the same issue, north to south is way off, but east west is dead on. I had measured one of the island squares at the runway junction at 250' x 250', and using the scale for east west it was right on, but I went to go north, and it wasn't even close. I even had Ken go re-measure that square to make sure I had the right numbers.

I would be interested in your blank map for future use.

Jeff Cawthorne

[Steve Towers]

Kurt,

I'd also like to have your layout. There's a fair chance I'll be doing a course design for PCA in May.

[Kurt Rahn]

No problem. Right now it's in Adobe Illustrator format, and if you have Illustrator on your computer, it's cool to be able to turn the layers on and off. If not, I can save it in PDF format as well. Just let me know which you want.

[Steve Towers]

.pdf for me. Also, I think it's possible to open an illustrator file in Solidworks, so I can try that too.

towersls at sbcglobal dot net

[Mako Koiwai]

Me 2 pls Makofoto at earthlInk dot net