Offline Maps for plotting stations

[John Beckwith]

Greetings - new to this group.   Trying to setup my Mobilnkd TNC3 to use with APRS.fi. in remote locations.   It has been suggested I download the maps for use offline.    How do I do that?

Thanks in advance.

John, N6JCB 

[Heikki Hannikainen]

On Mon, 24 May 2021, John Beckwith wrote:

> Greetings - new to this group.   Trying to setup my Mobilnkd TNC3 to use with APRS.fi. in remote locations.
>   It has been suggested I download the maps for use offline.    How do I do that?Thanks in advance.

Hi,

The aprs.fi iOS app uses the Apple maps engine, which does not support
explicit download of maps for offline use.

But it does cache downloaded maps data all the time, and uses cached map
data whenever possible (if it already has recent enough map data on the
device). It will also use cached data when downloading map data fails,
i.e. when the device is offline.

The procedure that I have used myself (in aprs.fi, and within the Maps
application of the iPhone, already long time ago when traveling without a
proper 3G data package...), is to browse and zoom around in the target
area before leaving. The device will then have the data in the cache (on
persistent flash storage of the phone).

The data is downloaded and stored in vector format (curves, not pixel
images/bitmaps), so if it doesn't have some smaller roads in the cache,
and you zoom in to a level which would then show them, the map will not
pixelate - it will be drawn at a high pixel resolution, it'll just not
include the small roads.

- Hessu