Recently, a huge number of cards have appeared on the worldwide web, which, unfortunately, some sites want to sell. In our store there are only unique information products. Only here you can download a map of the Sverdlovsk region for free literally in one click. We cannot hide from users what has long been in the public domain. For example, here you can find Garmin topo maps for free. A navigator is a rather expensive purchase, so it may be that there is not enough money for maps. In any case, when you buy such a device, you win, but for the time being, you can use the free cards that are presented in this section.

What are Garmin Introductory Maps

This is proprietary software prepared by us. Professional cards, which come with a fee, have a lot more options. In order to understand whether they are needed, it is necessary to establish the purpose of your trips. If these are just trips to nature with the family, then it is enough to buy a navigator in our store and download free Garmin topographic maps. If you are engaged in serious multi-day trips (including ATV trips), then you will have to buy professional maps in the end.

What else can be found here

Download free Garmin GPS maps and more. Information will be gradually updated here, we will expose maps prepared by us for free use. There are also topographic maps that were scanned a very long time ago, and have been in the public domain for more than 10 years. In fact, everything a beginner needs is here.

As you know, on the maps there is such a thing as scale. Travel maps are created so that travelers can then simply navigate the terrain and go to the desired point, according to a pre-approved route. Much more accurate maps are used by the military. When conducting combat operations, every, even the smallest detail is important. After all, it can play a decisive role in saving human lives and achieving victories in the theater of operations. Legendary maps of the General Staff 500 meters are now available to everyone. Information on them for a long time was strictly classified. Now their use is allowed at the legislative level. The latest samples of maps in 1:500 and 1:250 scales are available to all our customers without exception. We have absolutely all the sheets that are digitized and linked to electronic maps for navigators.

What are the benefits of such cards

They show everything down to the smallest detail. You will know about the type of forest, tree heights, presence of fords, bridges, wells with drinking water, height of the terrain, etc. In general, it will be possible to obtain almost any information. A scale of 1 centimeter - 500 meters guarantees a high degree of detail, which will allow you to accurately enter any object.

To order, it will be enough to name the region of the Russian Federation that is needed. There is no need to study prefabricated sheets and delve into the intricacies of the coordinate cartographic grid. Using these cards is very simple, because their designations are intuitive and known to each of us since childhood.

How much does it cost

General staff maps can be downloaded for free, but the quality is usually very poor. Also, not all sheets may be available, and usually the most interesting areas are missing. In order not to deprive yourself, use the services of our store. It will be possible to download the map of the General Staff only after the payment procedure.

One of the most widespread and detailed maps of Ukraine is the maps of the General Staff. Mostly they were compiled and published in the period of 70-80 years of the last century. However, despite the past years, today on the Internet you can find scans of such maps in a very decent resolution. In total, they occupy a little over 900 megabytes. Maps of the General Staff of Ukraine, as a rule, have a traditional scale - 1:100000. The value of these maps is almost immeasurable. They provide an opportunity to form an idea of ​​the situation for 70-80 years, and also help to compare the old and new maps in order to calculate what changes have occurred.

In order to freely use the cards of the General Staff of Ukraine, special superpowers are not required. It is enough just to have access to them, to master the system of symbols and to know the measuring techniques that are usually used in working with maps. Perhaps, due to inexperience, someone will have problems using the card. What do you need to know about the General Staff to prevent this from happening?

A bit about the military term

To begin with, it must be said that, in fact, the General Staff was created after the collapse of the USSR and the formation of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. Today it is the main body of the country in matters of state defense planning, command and control of the armed forces, control of military formations, government bodies, executive power, etc. In special cases, such as an emergency situation in the country, the General Staff also receives the powers of the working body of the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander APU. That is, the responsibility for making all decisive decisions rests with the staff of this organization.

In a broad sense, it is generally accepted that the General Staff is the main command and control body of troops. But if you delve into the meaning of the term, you will notice that in different countries it is understood and interpreted
differently. In Germany, for example, the General Staff was the body of operational leadership, which commanded the ground forces, aviation and navy. In France, he controlled the training of troops and the provision of all necessary operations. It is logical to assume that the highest ranks are enrolled in the General Staff, whose experience and knowledge are necessary in solving the most important issues in the fate of the country. The defense of the state can be entrusted only to people who know their business. That is why the best cadres of the highest military staffs are admitted to the General Staff. As a rule, these are those who have already reached the position of general.

Maps of the General Staff of Ukraine (original sheets) require careful preservation. Since only a careful attitude to valuable cartographic material is a guarantee that this material will not become disposable within the framework of a particular task, but will also serve for subsequent use. It will ensure proper preservation of the map of the General Staff of Ukraine by its correct initial folding. After all, numerous kinks contribute to rapid wear, in particular, in the same places of kinks.

Today, downloading a map of the General Staff is the easiest and most affordable way for every Internet user. Information of interest is available in the form of photographs, as well as files linked to gps navigators and the ozi explorer program (in ozf2 and map format).

After the Second World War, the military triangulations of independent states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland) as well as Germany were combined into one system (triangulation network of 2, 3, 4 classes), An accurate triangulation network was necessary when creating a topographic survey at a scale of 1: 25000 and small scale maps.

In the USSR, since 1942, Krasovsky's reference ellipsoid has been used. Krasovsky's ellipsoid is a reference ellipsoid, the dimensions of which were derived in 1940 at the Central Research Institute of Geodesy, Aerial Photography and Cartography (TsNIIGAiK) by the Soviet geodesist A. A. Izotov on the basis of studies conducted under the general supervision of F. N. Krasovsky.

The dimensions of the Krasovsky ellipsoid were derived from degree measurements made in the territory of the former USSR, Western European countries and the USA. Although these degree measurements, together with the definitions of gravity, led to the conclusion that the figure of the geoid can be more correctly represented by a triaxial ellipsoid, nevertheless, the ellipsoid was taken as an ellipsoid of revolution.

The Krasovsky ellipsoid is characterized by the following values: semi-major axis a 6378 245 m; compression of the Earth 1:298.3.

The position (orientation) of the Krasovsky ellipsoid in the body of the Earth is determined by the geodetic coordinates of the center of the round hall of the Pulkovo Observatory:
latitude B0 = 59°46"18.55",
longitude L0 = 30°19"42.09",
the height x0 is set equal to zero.

The Krasovsky ellipsoid is also used in geodetic and cartographic works in all countries of the former USSR, in Eastern Europe, China, India, North Korea, South Korea, Mongolia and other countries.

On the territory of the former USSR, Russia and a number of other countries, a similar Gauss-Kruger projection is used for large-scale maps. In 1825, Carl Friedrich Gauss solved the general problem of depicting one surface on another while preserving the similarity in infinitesimal parts. The working projection formulas were derived by A. Krueger in 1912. This projection is conformal, or conformal, i.e. saves angles and directions.

In 1959-1969, the military completed a triangulation network of 2, 3, 4 classes on the territory of Lithuania, in which there were about 1800 points. Maps published in the USSR since 1942 use the 1942 or SK-42 coordinate system. For civilian purposes, a distorted coordinate system of 1963 or SK-63 was introduced with a shifted frame (frames).

At the end of the era of the USSR (1990s), the category of topographic maps included maps with scales1:1000000, 1:500000, 1:200000, 1:100000, 1:50000, 1:25000 and 1:10000. Maps in scales of 1:5000, 1:2000, 1:1000 and 1:500 were considered topographic plans.

A map at a scale of 1:1,000,000 was considered strategic, while maps at a scale of 1:500,000 and 1:200,000 were operational maps. Maps in scale 1:100000, 1:50000 and 1:25000 made up a group of tactical maps.

In the first decades after the war, the topographic survey scale was 1:25,000; in the 1990s, the entire territory of Lithuania was covered by maps at a scale of 1:10,000 with contour lines every 1.0 or 1.5 meters. Using the 1:10000 map, the 1:25000 map was also updated, the relief step on the map (h) was strictly connected to the map scale: on the map 1:25000 h=5 m, 1:50000 h=10 m, 1:100000 h=20 m.

The main geodetic and cartographic work on the field of war was carried out by the military. Civilian organizations produced topographic surveys at a scale of 1:10,000 (and larger) and a leveling network. Only at the end of the century, maps began to be updated not by the military, but by Enterprise No. 5 at the main department of geodesy and cartography.

Nomenclature of coordinate system maps 1942

The nomenclature of topographic maps is based on a map at a scale of 1:1,000,000 (10 km in 1 cm).

The entire surface of the Earth is divided by parallels into rows (through 4 °), and by meridians - into columns (through 6 °); the sides of the formed trapezoids serve as the boundaries of the sheets of the map at a scale of 1:1000000. The rows are indicated by capital Latin letters from A to V, starting from the equator to both poles, and the columns are indicated by Arabic numerals, starting from the meridian 180 ° from west to east. The map sheet nomenclature consists of a row letter and a column number. For example, the sheet with the city of Vilnius is designated N-35. Subpolar circular regions (with a latitude greater than 88°) are denoted by the letter Z without indicating the column number. Sheets of millionth maps located between latitudes 60-76° are doubled in longitude; Thus, a sheet of a map at a scale of 1:1,000,000 will have a longitude not of 6, but of 12°. Above 76° the charts quadruple and occupy 24° of longitude. Beyond 88° is sheet Z, covering the full 360°.

Double sheets of a millionth card are indicated by indicating a row (letter) and two corresponding columns (an odd number followed by an even number). Quadruple sheets are formed in a similar way, four columns are listed separated by commas.

In this article, I will share simple and convenient tools (maps and programs) that I myself use to plan and navigate my simple hiking routes in the process.


Disadvantages of topographic maps of the General Staff

Topographic maps of the General Staff (usually paper or already scanned) are good, as they provide high-quality standardized information about the area. But it is not always possible to have sufficiently detailed maps. And it is impossible to use them “quickly” by opening the cards on a computer or smartphone. They are not presented as a whole and each area has to be searched individually and in advance.

Having performed a certain dance with a tambourine, you can bind the map scan to the coordinates in special programs and upload it to the navigator yourself. But again, this must be done in advance, you need a navigator, skill and time. And if you decide to just take a walk on vacation in a huge park or suddenly get lost somewhere in nature (especially in mountainous areas) and want to find a path? In such a situation, a once-installed application on a smartphone will surely help you out.

In addition, there are other goodies that are missing in topographic maps, which I will talk about later.

Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning a good service that connected the maps of the General Staff into a combined online map - Routes.ru. But so far I have not found such cards in applications on smartphones.


- modern topographic maps

For myself, I have long found a replacement that covers most of my goals (simple tracking). These are maps based on OpenStreetMap (OSM) data.

These are open non-commercial online maps of the whole world created jointly by the participants of this project.
To create maps, data from personal GPS trackers, aerial photographs, video recordings, satellite images and street panoramas provided by some companies, as well as project participants, are used.

In fact, this is data about objects created by a huge community of people in various ways. And anyone can freely build maps based on this data.

So why is OSM better? topographic cartgenstaff?

  1. Completeness of coverage. They represent the whole world.
  2. Detail and precision provided information about the terrain and the location of objects.
  3. hiking trails. A large number of accurate information about hiking trails based on GPS trackers. And this is what allows you to use the map for direct navigation along the trails. And if you find yourself in conditions of unexpected snowfall and a swept path, poor visibility, such information will help you find the lost path. It has saved me many times.
  4. Lots of easy to use programs and services for various devices and operating systems using these cards. All thanks to an open license. Most of them provide the ability to save maps offline on your device for navigating the area without using the Internet.
  5. Opportunity map export into all sorts of formats. Be it PNG, JPEG, SVG, PDF, PostScript or even Garmin and Polish format for other navigation software.
  6. Some programs and services overlay these maps with data from other maps and sources adding information and functionality. For example, data from Wikimapia
  7. If you have internet, you can load the desired area on the spot.

In addition, there is everything that is in topographic maps:

  1. Terrain type. Rocks, forests, fields, rivers, reservoirs and all the rest.
  2. The presence altitude information(OpenCycleMap, Landscape, OpenTopoMap).
  3. Water sources

The list of advantages is far from complete and represents only what most clearly reflects the advantages from my point of view and for my purposes (tracking).


OSM based maps

The main and first map built on these data has the same name OpenStreetMap and is located at the address of the project itself. Often provides more useful terrain information than the next two, but does not display elevation.

These maps are available online both on the osm site itself and on its own domain.
The most interesting layers for tracking with heights are actually OpenCycleMap and Landscape (available only at http://www.opencyclemap.org).

Map (layer) Landscape, in my opinion, represents more information about the area.


Recently discovered these cards. Despite their name, they are also built on the OpenStreetMap database, but they are more like topographic maps and are similar in many ways to the Landscape layer mentioned above.

Wikimapia
The slogan of the project: "Let's describe the whole world!". An international project, an online geographic encyclopedia whose goal is to tag and describe all geographic features on Earth. And they do it very successfully. Wikimapia has over 2.4 million registered users and over 26 million features added to the map (as of 2016). The project uses various maps on its website, including OSM. On them and displays these objects. Wikimapia data often uses other services to overlay their maps.

Programs for a computer with OSM maps

To plan a route on a computer, you can use online maps in a browser. But this is not very convenient.

I am using the program SAS.Planet for Windows. The program accumulates all of the above cards except Landscape. As well as many other cards including General Staff cards from the service Routes.ru, GoogleMaps, YandexMaps and many others.

You can overlay data from other maps and databases on one card, thus creating personal information. Allows you to plot routes, measure distances, save marks, export maps and data to other formats. Allows you to connect a navigator and much more.