I use search terms "X Open Data" or "X GIS". If the city and county don't have anything, you might have to settle for downloading state datasets and clipping them to local boundaries. I also had an instance in one of the cities north of Norfolk where one of the cities had also uploaded a couple datasets for the city next to it for whatever reason.
> its much easier to just obtain coords to places of interest to plan ingress azimuth, firing vectors, etc using easily printable maps and learning land nav at a local park or something
The point of GIS is to plan those factors out more precisely than you could by hand, and then print the map itself for distribution. You'd be an idiot to find yourself out in a field and say "Oh I should make a GIS map to get home!", but you'd be putting yourself at a disadvantage to be planning a movement ahead of time when you have any sort of computer at hand and say "It'll be good enough if I just draw on these topo maps I printed out!"
Pic related for example: I picked a random bridge in the area I have data, did some viewshed analysis over key terrain features using DEM data in the first picture, then did viewshed analysis over the spots where the layers overlapped, and found a fairly good spot, and more importantly exactly where you would and wouldn't be able to see an average human walking around. You can also change the target height in the analysis to find blind spots for approaching vehicles or people crawling on the ground. The whole thing was done in about 30 minutes, granted it took a few hours of casual troubleshooting before I realized the dumb mistake I made in not defining the map projection on the DEM layer.
I'd almost want to write a GEOINT follow up to the Strelok's SIGINT manual, but it'd just be a clumsy rewrite of the QGIS manual.
>UV-9r is 2x the watts and bigger stock battery AND waterproof for only $8 more but accessories like long antenna etc
UV-9R has the same TX power as the UV-5r. UV-9R Plus has 15 watt TX and is $46, twice as much as the UV-5r. Haven't heard about it taking different antennae though. What's the top jack? Did they finally switch to a female SMA?
>Even the most rudimentary recon would give you that information without needing the infrastructure to maintain the level of map generation
It's foolish to ignore a capability under the assumption that you wouldn't have the infrastructure to even power a small laptop. Syria has been at war for 8 years and even Aleppo has always had enough electricity to power cell phone cameras. Even the Taliban can spare electricity for Psyops.
>I appreciate your autism, but going innawoods with friends and a map and you can learn this stuff. All the tech in the world doesn't supplant skill and knowledge.
Again, in a basic environment where you need a field expedient solution, paper maps are perfect and landnav skills are critical. In fact, good GIS analysis is impossible if you don't understand what information you need to navigate effectively.
>You could give a kid a mgrs gps app in a phone and this enclosed map, tell him blue is east, yellow is north, funny circles mean hills and you can put him in the fight.
Why settle for that when you can give him an enclosed map that also highlights dangerous areas he'll cross en route, exactly where his targets are, and an important road?
Take for example a more complex topographical environment like pic related. You could be forgiven for assuming that the ridgeline on the right side of the image has a fairly clear view of all major terrain features. However, you would have to study quite a bit to decide which roads connecting HWY 19 to the nearby airport are within your view. You also may not notice that you would not have a view of the entire runway on the airport, and you'd barely be able to see the highway leading into Richlands. I know all this and I don't even live in Virginia! It's foolish to think that a tool like this is useless because you can just as easily go "innawoods with friends and a map." You are turning down a useful enhancement to your skill because you think you are already so skillful.
Here's V 1.0, same as the last release, just prettied it up a bit and added a couple links to "further reading".
Plus a cover I made for funsies. I have an outline including things like QGIS, GOES, and RGB-D, but I'll have to learn a lot more about them before I can make a guide for it. Also, see the last pdf if you don't already have it for a great compilation of GIS databases.