Hi all,
A long time ago I found a tutorial on VK2GOM´s blog on how to calculate SOTA activation zones in Google Earth, using a flood tool. The tutorial pointed to a link to download a tool called flood.kml on another website, but nowadays defunct.
Does anyone still have this file and if so, could share? Or is there another method anyone can recommend, besides the N6ARA website?
73
Paulo CT2IWW
The easy way is to use this tool specifically made for SOTA:
https://activation.zone/
No need to mess around with Google Earth anymore.
Warning: The DEM data in most of the world is too bad to take anything for granted. So good maps and onsummit investigation is needed.
In OE we have the AZ in sotl.as as very good DEM data is available to one of our SOTA enthusiats:
Here as example how wrong Google Earth is:
And reality:
73 Joe
I found the flood tool not good enough for a reliable detection of the activation zone.
See my post from 4 years ago: Activation zone boundary annotation on maps - #27 by HB9EKO
73 Jens HB9EKO
Hi Paulo,
The flooding-tool plug-in was used in the early days of SOTA in VK and elsewhere to check prominence rather than the AZ (although that would also be possible). By flooding an area at 150 metres below a sumit’s height, you automatically got rid of sub-ordinnate summits that didn’t have 150m prominence of their own. You could also see where the possible cols were from the summit. All of this was not 100% accurate and always backed up with the use of an accurate, government approved mapping system.
As Google Earth progressed, I believe the pro version had a flood function added in and at that point, the plug-in stopped working in the free version of Google Earth. So even if someone still had the plug-in file, it would most likley not work with the current version of Google Earth.
73 Ed DD5LP/VK2JI.
