Custom NOAA Charts Revisited

[Joseph Berkovitz]

Lately when I am off the water, I'm on the hunt for useful, time-consuming projects that I might not bother doing if it were not for the pandemic. Sometimes I even find one!

Recently some of my West Coast paddling friends turned me on to a free, open source mapping application called QGIS. It is a professional-quality program for manipulating and presenting geographic data that has been around for over a decade, quietly getting better and better. With a jump start from the Bay Area folks I have put a bunch of time into understanding how to use it with NOAA raster charts to produce kayak-ready maps with nice grids, scales, etc. While learning to use it is not for the faint of heart, nor for the technically disinclined, I am finding it's now truly easy to turn out map after map with very little additional effort - the program does all the hard work of splicing the maps and adding grids, legends, scale bars, etc. The remaining little bit of work lies in deciding what area to display on the map and how to best rotate it and break it up into pages — the creative part, you might say. This simplicity is the payoff for taking the time to set up a "real" GIS application like this.

Here are some samples that are ready to laminate in 11x17" format with lat/long labeling, magnetic variation lines spaced 1 nm apart, and scale bars:

(Mike H told me that there is a problem with the Downloads section of the site right now, but the above newly created files do seem to work for me right now — some of the older uploaded charts are not available, though, which is worrying.)

Having put all this time in and imported most of the NOAA New England charts, I am happy to make up charts on demand for NSPN members who want one for a trip, until/unless I get sick of doing them or don't have the time. I will upload them to our downloads area like the ones above, and they will be there for all to use. Just PM me and tell me what area you want to cover. If this works out, eventually we should get pretty good coverage of New England.

As far as passing on this knowledge goes, I am up for that. For those of you who took my workshop earlier this year, I would just say (again) that QGIS has a much steeper learning curve than the simpler procedures I presented, and it needs a quite powerful machine for all the graphics-crunching. So I'm considering doing some sort of Zoom workshop over the winter to show how it works, along with a crib sheet of sorts. I can't promise that I can make QGIS "easy", but I can run through what I do and share the templates I've created.

 

[detorres]

Joe 

sounds great I just did a partial job to get a two sided 8.5 X 11 chart  of most of Casco bay for this up coming weekend. I had a hard time cropping from the NOAH PDFs to get the right size and area, so anything new is welcome . I am up for  zoom session.

How do I find the download section of the site, otherwise I might share via google drive.

 

Regards

 

Pablo

[kate]

1 hour ago, detorres said:

How do I find the download section of the site, otherwise I might share via google drive.

Look up top there under the NSPN header on the left. There is a Downloads link.

[rfolster]

1 hour ago, detorres said:

How do I find the download section of the site

Use the Browse tab at the top of the forum, and it is the left-most option underneath the tab bar.

[gyork]

Webmasters: Is there a way to create folders in the "Downloads" section? It would be nice to keep charts separate from other docs. I'd like to suggest "Southern", "Midcoast", or "Downeast" for simplicity, or follow the MITA guidebook index which is divided into "Southern Coast", "Casco Bay", "Western Rivers", "Muscongus Bay", "PenBay", "Deer Isle", "MDI", "Downeast", "Bold Coast", " and "Cobscook Bay."

[mhabich]

40 minutes ago, gyork said:

Webmasters: Is there a way to create folders in the "Downloads" section? It would be nice to keep charts separate from other docs. I'd like to suggest "Southern", "Midcoast", or "Downeast" for simplicity, or follow the MITA guidebook index which is divided into "Southern Coast", "Casco Bay", "Western Rivers", "Muscongus Bay", "PenBay", "Deer Isle", "MDI", "Downeast", "Bold Coast", " and "Cobscook Bay."

There is a folder for charts.  Are you also asking for subfolders for region?  Should be able to do this too.

[mhabich]

3 hours ago, detorres said:

sounds great I just did a partial job to get a two sided 8.5 X 11 chart  of most of Casco bay for this up coming weekend. I had a hard time cropping from the NOAH PDFs to get the right size and area, so anything new is welcome....

Pablo, did you make this chart using QGIS or by other means?

[mhabich]

Let's be sure to include lat/long, scale, and compass rose or mag variation on any charts posted.

[detorres]

Mike

I just cropped and scaled a PDF using Adobe/acrobat.

I did not have enough time to go up the learning curve to manipulate and add lat/long, scale, and compass rose or mag variation.

Perhaps after Joes's Zoom webinar

 

Pablo

[Joseph Berkovitz]

No problem Pablo - here is a 2-page lamination-ready Casco Bay chart for those who want it. It is rotated to fit more stuff and has the indications. I'm happy to do more of these, just ask.

 

[mhabich]

Links to forum discussions on other methods to prepare a chart:

Using CalTopo

Using an image editor
https://www.nspn.org/forum/topic/12038-on-line-nautical-noaa-charts/

None of these methods is as easy or effective as we'd like, but your choice may depend on your previous familiarity with various types of software.  The ideal might be the custom charts prototyped by NOAA, but the results are horrendous.