NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Hewitt Schlereth
Date: 2013 May 15, 14:32 -0700
Sent from my iPad
Yes, Hewitt, I am sure you're right. It's getting the altitude data from an underlying topographic map.
And you can do very much the same thing in Google Maps on Android (I haven't found a way to do the same on iOS... maybe the stand-alone Google Maps app?). No specialized app is required, but you have to add a feature that's in beta to see it. Go into the main menu of Google Maps (on Android smartphones and tablets), select "Settings" and then "Labs". Add the "Measure" tool. This does a nice job calculating distances along paths that you can create by tapping on the map. In addition it shows a detailed altitude profile of the path, which is useful for hiking. If you create a path that is very short, say, five feet long, then the altitude profile is just the altitude at the start location. Works very well!
For the location you gave in La Jolla, Hewitt, Google Maps shows an elevation of 118 feet (compared to 121 feet which you said the "Elevation Chart" app provided). Those are close enough, I think. I have experimented with some locations I know here on the island, and the altitudes strike me as accurate, and they seem to agree with high-quality topo maps. Certainly the altitude provided by this system is much better than the usual GPS-derived altitude.
-FER
PS: I am aware that when other NavList members quoted back Hewitt's message in email, the result was another unwrapped message. I will see if I can get any clue on the underlying cause from this latest example.
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