Monday, August 31, 2009

Mercator Templates

Using the ChartComponents package, I generated some Mercator Templates (aka Mercator Plotting Sheets) that can be used for celestial navigation. They're available as pdf documents in different sizes: 11" x 8½", 11" x 17" and 17" x 22".
The Letter format (11" x 8.5"), which is quite small. I need to try it to make sure this is not too small. I reduced on all versions the latitude span to 3 degrees (instead of 6, on the charts published by the French SHOM, format ½ Grand Aigle), for the definition of a mile not to be too small.

Monday, August 24, 2009

New feature: Load composite from the web

You can now load an archived composite from the web, in the Weather Wizard.
There are archived composites at http://donpedro.lediouris.net/weather/waz/, and they can be accessed directly. Go to File > Load Composite from the web.
There was a lot of activity in the tropical zone during the past weeks, hurricanes, typhoons, tropical waves, depressions and storms. They can be visualized this way, in case you did not follow those phenomenons on a daily base.