A new use for Google Earth....

I just realized something, that Google Earth can give us a really good idea on how far our lights can throw...

to give you an example, *this* is our property, just to give you an idea of scale, that's 50 acres of land, the yellow border is our property line, orange is my sister's barn and pastures;


we have a wispy willow tree out in the field that never really did too well when the pasture was on our property, the horses saw the willow tree as a tasty snack..., now that the horses are in my sister's barn, the tree has a fighting chance

when i first was playing with my MagCharger, it amazed me how far the thing could throw, it was able to hit the willow tree in the old pasture, my P61'ed 6P could throw out to the middle of the woodlot, and the 3W Fenix lights, the front edge of the woodlot

a week or so ago i was playing around on Google Earth, and noticed the resolution in our area had been increased, so now, i can show you the distances the lights will throw...


i think it's a pretty cool use for Google Earth, dontchathink?

Indeed a great tool to further define our "throw" descriptions, you know what they say about the ole' picture being worth a thousand words! :thumbsup:

:twothumbs Great idea MacTech and good work :goodjob:

Best regards

____
Tom

Brilliant idea! I bet the inventors of Google Earth didn't think of such use themselves. With the pics, I could really "visualize" how you "throw" your lights.

Great work MacTech.

Can you also show a scale for the pics?

Something like: "marked distance" = 100 ft, whatever it actually is on the pic.

If there is a scale, it shouldn't be too hard to come up with a distance between any two points in the pic.

Yes, very good use.

This old home computer doesn't support G.E. I'll have to check it out from another location.

However, using Maps.Google I can tell you that a Mag85 gives good image return when it is used just above the "R" in Rebsamen, pointed due north and lighting up the tree line in that cove. Not bright but good enough image return to detect the colors of the trees etc. Looking at this link you can use the scale to see I'm talking about around 1500 feet or 500 meters. Then you can click on the satellite button and see that the projection point is at the western end of the leftmost parking lot.

If I backed this up with a beam shot then it would be clear what I was seeing and at what distance.

Good idea, MacTech.

I used a similar method but with topographic maps... never occured to me that I can use google earth & maps for this too. Great idea, especially with google maps. great way to verify distances when I don't have access to my extensive map collection

I'm not seeing very good resolution from Google Earth on my 'puter.

Your pics don't resemble what I see when I use GE....

Nice post, I wish my area had the newer color photos, still havent got to here yet.

hm, I just went to open my Google Earth, and im having a Driver Component Mis-Match Error, and i have to close the program,
anyone else have this happen?
Saw a couple things on the net about it, but the couple suggestions I saw didnt work.

~John

GE is working fine for me John...

You can also try "local.live.com" which I believe is Microsofts version that is web-based.

I find that there is variation between the images used by both - some locations are either better resolution and/or more up to date than the other.

thats alot of land

unfortunately google earth is quite discriminating when it comes to high resolution areas...my house looks grainy just hitting 600 ft...while other houses can be viewed at near 150 ft

Illum_the_nation said:

..my house looks grainy just hitting 600 ft...while other houses can be viewed at near 150 ft

Click to expand...

This could be called "Google Earth Throw"

Best regards

_____
Tom

While researching properties, I used Google Earth extensively. It seems that the more urban/suburban areas have better resolution. In general, rural areas have lower resolution in my area. There are even specific areas where you can distinguish double yellow lines in the middle of the road quite clearly in the high resolution areas.

Good idea!

Here is a pic of where I live, in the back there is a storm ditch where I can test my lights in almost complete darkness, The HID spotlight I modded a few months back can illuminate very good that bridge at about 2000 ft, I can also illuminate the treeline in the back of the bridge but the city lights on the bridge dont help much in seeing the actual range of the light.



AlexGT

Very nice!!

If you want to estimate the distance, you can try using the GMaps Pedometer, at http://www.gmap-pedometer.com. It's a site that was originally designed for people that walk/run/ride so they can measure the distance of their routes, but it looks like it could be useful in measuring beamshots too.

To use it, first find and zoom into your location on the map (you can change to satellite maps by clicking the "Satellite" button). Once you found your desired location, click the "Start Recording" button in the upper left. Now double-click the map at your starting location. You should see a little balloon appear. Next, double click your ending point. A second balloon should now appear. On the left-hand side of the screen it will tell you the distance in miles. Just multiply that amount by 5280, and you'll have the estimated distance in feet.

You can even save your route and post a direct link to it here if you want. For a simple example, here is a link showing a parking lot at a park where I used to walk my dogs.

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=484786 (you may have to hit reload if the image doesn't come up right away)

According to this it is about 0.0786 miles across, or right around 415 feet.

I don't know if anyone is interested in this, and it can be a little quirky at times, but I thought it was pretty cool when I came across it so I'm passing it on.

Outstanding!

1467.84 ft.

Link to gmap beamometer results.

Thanks again for the tip on how to measure, the distance I got is 2388 ft. of throw not bad.

AlexGT

according to the Google pedometer link above, my MagCharger throws 886.512 feet (i'll round down to a nice even 886 feet)

It seems the google pedometer isn't completely accurate. I measured a distance between 2 known points. Pedometer says it's 680 meter, while both my GPS measurements and topo maps tell me the distance is about 700 meters.

Not too bad, only about 3% difference, but might be something to take into account...