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Never mind what i said about hospitals.  I was looking at heliports,  big yellow circle with an H inside.  All the hospitals have one and they are named for the hospital they are sitting on, the yellow circle covers up the small black square that marks the hospital so they appeared to be hospitals.  Should have looked a little closer when i started seeing them every where. 

I did find some mountain terrain with 20' contour intervals, that looks real good.  I didnt find where it transitioned from 40' to 20', that could be confusing.  I tried to make my own map following the tutorial from this site.  Everything seemed to go good except i was never able to compile it all to make a map.  I remember at some point downloading the dems i had to choose contour intervals, and i choose 20'.   Maybe that could be one of my problems trying to make 20' intervals off of 40' interval quads?   

As far as CI on the gps unit.  I find the screen on mine too small to recognize geographic features at the 800' zoom, i'm usually looking for peaks and they always seem to be off the screen at 800'.  If i could get 40' intervals at .3 zoom that might be good, hard to guess if it would be too much clutter on the screen. 

I've been taking a closer look at the land ownership on Indy's map and its very accurate.  forest service, state school land and blm land all appear with green background.  If you scroll over the area the land is identified.  State school land show up as state park, blm is identified as national park, and forest service names the national forest.  The boundries are right for the blm and state trust land though.  Its not clearly marked where the two different types of land meet.  And hopefully most people know that state trust land generally isnt open to the public and its not a park.

Carl

Not sure what you mean here as the 10' or 40', etc should show when you are zoomed in to the 800' bar scale setting when using the mti mapset.  200' sounds like the intermediate index contour for an area using 40'

oh yea thats right, i guess i never zoom in that much

For roads, I used Dec, 2008 Census data; IndyJpr used CDOT info - the metadata indicating it was many years old - and some areas used 'internal codes' rather than actual street names.  FS has some nice road/trail data; however it would be very time consuming too edit out the other road/trail data where both exist, or confusing to have both as their positions are usually slightly different.

somehow it seems indy's map let the f.s. info over ride the cdot. Its pretty much the same as my most recent paper f.s. maps, only listing the open non gated roads.  Yours shows tons more roads, great many of them closed or gated off

I used the federal lands info from USGS and substituded more detail info from the Park Service.
IndyJpr may have use info from BLM.  I since found more detailed info from BLM, however most polygons are not named in this file.

within f.s boundries indy's maps the boundries  seem identical to blm digital info i get at geocommunicator, so maybe thats it.  That info is the most accurate i can find on land ownership.  Thats strange though because indy's map sometimes shows blm and i think state school land as f.s. land.  But outside f.s boundries i dont think it shows any blm land.  

Point data is mostly from the USGS GNIS (geographic names information system).  A lot of the coordinates in that file are not very accurate.  Do you mean the hospitals are some hundreds of feet off, or that there is none at that location?

no hospital around, just randomly shown out in the middle of nowhere.

We both used NHD for hydro, however USGS is still changing that database so downloads at different times will have slightly different data.  IndyJpr may not have included the 'crenulated ephemeral streams' on Forest Service lands as these are not shown on the printed USGS topo quads.

both maps have the same info when i zoom in enough (.2 or .3 miles).  Zoom out to 1 mile and your map still shows the info and indy's doesnt, the streams look a little chopped up

edit: fixed quotes

I use both the indyjpr and the mti map for Colorado.  On the mti map I see 10' contours around my house, but dont recall seeing anything besides 40' contours anywhere in the mountains where i'm using topo maps.  Around the .2 zoom both maps are usually identical.  Zoom to 1 mile and the contours are the same the only thing I notice is that blue lines indicating creeks near head waters are more detailed on the mti map, making it a little more appealing to look at.

ON my Garmin vista gps the most detailed contours i get is 200'.  I dont think i can change that.

Road info is very different on the two maps.  Mti shows a lot more forest roads, unfortunately most have been closed.  The roads on the indyjpr are mostly open.  When out hiking i prefer the mti map because the closed roads can be a good reference point.  When trying to figure out how to drive somewhere i use the indy map. 

I really like having the blm land on the mti map, its not accurate enough to rely on but gives me a clue there is blm land around.  Within national forest land I have found land ownership to be more accurate on the indy map.  So that gives me a problem when out hiking,  i want the more detailed roads info on the mti map and the more accurate land status on the indy map.  If i'm in the car with the laptop i find myself toggling between the two maps quite often. 

Hospitals are randomly placed across the mti map, no big deal unless you where actually looking for a hospital.  Some other landmarks are repeated several times in a general locality. 

All in all there both great maps. 

Carl

Excellent. 

I'm using Colorado.  On the garmin vista it shows up as green for national forest and sort of a beige for blm, then just the boundry line at 800 ft.   Works great.  In  mapsource forest land is green and blm has greyish diagonal stripes.  Comparing it to geocommunicator the boundries are a little different.  I'm guessing the your topo is more accurate?  The only other thing i could ask for is state land.
But this is really awesome, thanks.  Very good detailed road information. 

Carl 

Yes the IndyJpr map.   I think i'm just replicating that.  Back in November i had time to kill so started this, no idea what i was getting into.  I wasnt sure if I did something wrong to have such a large dem folder, glancing over the combine and compile tutorials I didnt see where any of that data gets deleted.   Glad to know at some point this will be scaled down to 200mb. thanks for the info.

Carl 

I was using the tutorial on this site to make a Colorado topo.  The dem folder is 23 gb, transportation folder is 1.3 gb.   Thats as far as i've gone.  but i'm running low on space. Anybody no how much more i'll need to finish the map. 

Will this map be any different than the finished colorado topo downloaded off of this site?  The finished map is great, but i wanted to try to add surface management if there is a way, like the blm's geocommunicator.

Thanks, Carl 

shew.  thanks, thought i did something stupid when i couldnt find them in dem2topo. 

I think I missed a step processing dem files.  Where to the mp files go when you click create mp files? 

I downloaded them dems for Colorado.  Now i've loaded some tif files into dem2topo and clicked create mpfile.   It seems to work and eventually finishes processing but where is the file.   Most of these are taking an hour or so.  I dont want to do all 80 of them and find out i didnt do it right.

thanks, Carl