=== Load Maps .Load Maps Window image::load-maps.png[width=500] Before heading out to a new launch site, you can use this to load satellite images in case you don't have internet connectivity at the site. Try not to wait until the last minute, though, particularly if you're heading to a major launch. If too many people are all trying to download map data at once, Google may limit access until the next day. There's a drop-down menu of launch sites we know about; if your favorites aren't there, please let us know the lat/lon and name of the site. The contents of this list are actually downloaded from our server at run-time, so as new sites are sent in, they'll get automatically added to this list. If the launch site isn't in the list, you can manually enter the lat/lon values There are four different kinds of maps you can view; you can select which to download by selecting as many as you like from the available types: Hybrid:: A combination of satellite imagery and road data. This is the default view. Satellite:: Just the satellite imagery without any annotation. Roadmap:: Roads, political boundaries and a few geographic features. Terrain:: Contour intervals and shading that show hills and valleys. You can specify the range of zoom levels to download; smaller numbers show more area with less resolution. The default level, 0, shows about 3m/pixel. One zoom level change doubles or halves that number. Larger zoom levels show more detail, smaller zoom levels less. The Map Radius value sets how large an area around the center point to download. Select a value large enough to cover any plausible flight from that site. Be aware that loading a large area with a high maximum zoom level can attempt to download a lot of data. Loading hybrid maps with a 10km radius at a minimum zoom of -2 and a maximum zoom of 2 consumes about 120MB of space. Terrain and road maps consume about 1/10 as much space as satellite or hybrid maps. Clicking the 'Load Map' button will fetch images from Google Maps; note that Google limits how many images you can fetch at once, so if you load more than one launch site, you may get some gray areas in the map which indicate that Google is tired of sending data to you. Try again later.