LOGic Map Troubleshooting

Here are some common questions and answers about LOGic's map facility.

My map is not in color, or the colors are wrong. What is the cause?

This is caused by deficiencies in your video driver. Update your video driver, or change the number of displayable colors. Right-click the desktop, select Properties, then Settings. The map looks best at high color or true color.

Booting into Safe Mode bypasses loading of all resident programs which may cause problems, and installs a very generic video driver. The map should always draw in this mode, but will not be as pretty, due to the 16-color limit.

When changing video drivers or settings, please be sure to redraw the map! See below.

My map drawing is incomplete. How do I fix it?

The map has never been drawn, or was interrupted before drawing was complete. Just redraw the map. See below.

How do I zoom the map?

Change the Radius to a lower value to zoom in, or a higher value to zoom out. Be sure to redraw the map.

How do I redraw the map?

In the map window, click Options, then Draw.

Sometimes part of the ocean is not filled with blue, or a country is not the proper color.

This is normal, and is more common when drawing a small area (zoomed in) on a small map. Increase the window size, or zoom out, and redraw the map.

The line from my QTH to the station I am working quit appearing.

Be sure to open the Info window in LOGic.

My map appears distorted.

All maps are distorted. This is necessary to represent the whole surface of a spherical object on a flat screen or piece of paper.

There are many map projections, each with its own compromises. For example, the Mercator projection, which is popular for typical wall maps, distorts several aspects of the earth. Directions are especially incorrect. That's why new hams in the US are surprised to learn that Europe is not East, but Northeast! Mercator projections also distort land area and distance, especially near the poles.

LOGic uses an Azimuthal Equidistant projection. This is the projection valued by hams for years because distances and directions from your QTH are always correct. The ARRL sells thousands of its ARRL World Maps, which uses the Azimuthal Equidistant projection.

The main disadvantage of this projection has been that a map must be custom-designed for each QTH. The ARRL World Map is a beautiful map and a real work of art, but is precise only if you live in the center of the United States. It is close for the rest of the continental US, but gets increasingly useless as you get further from the center of the US. If you look in old issues of QST, you will see ads offering Azimuthal Equidistant maps drawn on your QTH. Now that computers are commonplace, everyone can have their own custom map.

There are many different map projections. It is interesting to visit this web site.

http://www.utexas.edu/depts/grg/gcraft/notes/mapproj/mapproj.html