View Map Layers

This sub-menu of the View menu enables and disables various layers of the map display, so the user can display only the information of interest. Note that stations and objects are filtered by the Filter menu.

The different optional parts of the map include:

• enable/disable showing the latitude/longitude graticule (grid).
• enable/disable displaying range circles around transmitting stations.
• enable/disable displaying track stripes along the recorded travel path of all moving stations.
• enable/disable displaying dead-reckoned positions of moving stations without a current position message. This dead-reckoning only continues for a user-configurabled period of time, specified on the expert-mode configuration dialog's Preferences tab.
• enable/disable displaying direction-finding (DF) radials for stations reporting direction finding information, or listening area for stations reporting omni-DF information (DFS data extension). Radials will be plotted as yellow translucent cones of ambiguity with orange boresite (centerline) radial lines in the direction reported; omni-DF stations will be backed by a translucent checkerboard-patterned circle color-coded by the signal strength level reported:

  S0	black
  S1	gray
  S2	purple
  S3	blue
  S4	cyan
  S5	green-blue
  S6	green
  S7	yellow
  S8	orange
  S9 and higher	red

  Note that it is probably advisable to turn off the position ambiguity areas when analyzing omni-DF station reports, as the circles may blend together, making it difficult to determine the coverage and heard signal strength for any given omni-DF station.
• enable/disable displaying the age (time since last received packet) underneath each station's callsign.
• enable/disable displaying the bearing and speed of underneath each mobile station's callsign.
• enable/disable displaying National Weather Service multi-line polygons and polylines. These are encoded in messages from the NWS; the different colors and line types correspond to the following weather conditions:

  encoding letter	color	line type	meaning
  a	red	solid	tornado warning
  b	red	dashed	tornado watch
  c	red	double-dashed
  d	yellow	solid	severe thunderstorm warning
  e	yellow	dashed	severe thunderstorm watch
  f	yellow	double-dashed
  g	blue	solid	test warning
  h	blue	dashed	test watch
  i	blue	double-dashed
  j	green	solid
  k	green	dashed	mesoscale discussion area
  l	green	double-dashed
  m	orange	wide solid	YAAC's Aloha circle
  n	orange	wide dashed	YAAC's incomplete Aloha circle
  marine zone or county	darker blue	solid	small craft warning
  marine zone or county	darker cyan	solid	flood warning
  marine zone or county	darker cyan	dashed	flood watch
  marine zone or county	darker cyan	solid	flash flood warning
  marine zone or county	darker cyan	dashed	flash flood watch
  marine zone or county	yellow	solid	high winds warning
  marine zone or county	yellow	dashed	high winds watch

• enable/disable displaying active severe weather zones as transmitted in US National Weather Service status messages. Note that for US NWS zone boundaries to be displayed, you will need to download the county, marine, and public forecast zone shapefile sets from the National Weather Service website at https://www.weather.gov/gis/AWIPSShapefiles and unzip the zip files into your configured tile directory.
• enable/disable displaying the Aloha circle (maximum coverage range that would saturate the communications channel). Note that if you have more than 1 RF port (such as for a cross-band digipeater), multiple Aloha circles will be displayed (one for each RF port), based on the traffic heard through each port.
• enable/disable displaying position ambiguity areas behind limited-accuracy positions, using a translucent version of the most common color in the symbol icon. This layer and the DF (direction finding) layer should not both be on when analyzing omni-DF stations.
• enable/disable displaying color-coded status of stations and objects on the map by background color circles. The status colors are:

  Color	Meaning
  white	fixed (non-moving) station
  cyan	moving station
  dark cyan	dead-reckoned moving station
  gray	old station not updated for more than 80 minutes
  red	station reported an emergency ("EMERGENCY" in comment or Mic-E position report with emergency status code)
  yellow	object transmitted by this local YAAC station
  purple	object transmitted by some other station

• enable/disable displaying color-coded Mic-E status of stations on the map by rings around the station. Standard Mic-E statuses are solid rings, and the Mic-E custom codes are dashed (broken) rings. The colors are:

  Color	Meaning
  red	emergency
  orange	M6: priority
  yellow	M5: special
  magenta	M4: committed
  purple	M3: returning
  green	M2: in service
  cyan	M1: en route
  gray	M0: off duty

• draw the symbols for stations and objects double-sized (to make it easier to find them on the map).
• draw the digipeat hop paths between packet-originating RF stations and the local station (note this only is meaningful and works only for packets received from RF by the local station, not via the Internet).
• display "killed" objects and items after their kill times, or only currently active objects/items.
• use the locally defined aliases (such as tactical callsigns) for stations and objects instead of the actual callsign or object name; when aliases are displayed on the map, they are displayed in blue (rather than the black text used for station license callsigns and object names).
• selectively enable drawing different types of information from the OpenStreetMap database, individually controlling different types of OpenStreetMap Ways (continuous polylines or areas) (including the zoom scale at which the different types will start being displayed and labelled)
  
  OpenStreetMap Nodes (single points with descriptive attributes)
  and geographic labels of regions and points in the map, such as city and country names (specifying the zoom levels between which each level of political hierarchy will be labelled).
• selectively enable drawing terrain elevation either as color-coded background and/or contour lines. The colors and thresholds for color changing of terrain levels can also be customized.