Calibrated Russian Topos of Africa for Mac & PC

[gjackson]

The old Soviet 1:500,000 topos of Africa have been a great resource for overlanders for a long time. They are exceptional maps if you can get passed the cyrillic. When I used them in Africa they were only calibrated for Ozi (PC), and I had to manually calibrate each map in GPSY before I could use it. Now MadMappers has posted the full set re-projected in WGS84 and border clipped for easy stitching. Best of all MacGPS Pro can open these maps with no problem and recognizes the calibration!

North africa (334 maps):
http://www.madmappers.com/mapset.php?MS=182

Southern Africa (181 maps):
http://www.madmappers.com/mapset.php?MS=183

Included a screenshot of one of the later (1989) maps open in MacGPS Pro.

cheers

 

[cruiser guy]

These look like just what one needs for travel in Africa but how do you know what it says especially if you don't read Russian or Cryllic or whatever it is.

 

[AlexJet]

Actually it's not that difficult to read.
I did also seen in many sources that one of the best topo maps were Russians. Russia spend allot of money developing maps while America went with GPS. Now both worlds combine their knowledge.

 

[cruiser guy]

Actually it's not that difficult to read.

How about some hints then? What I'm looking at in Cryllic doesn't look anything like English to me! I can't even begin to imagine how they are similar.

They open and are calibrated just fine in OziExplorer by the looks of it.

 

[Sirocco]

Fantastic stuff. Detailed mapping of Africa for free. T4A stuff is supposedly good in the Southern half of Africa but the data is sparse in the north.

Graham, do you know if these maps will work through Fugawi? I have mapsource on this laptop, but dont think it will work. Waiting on my HP tablet to turn up before i install Fugawi on it and try it out. Its going to be my dedicated unit for overland/greenlane use running Memory map, Fugawi and Mapsource cant wait.

G

 

[craig]

I'm a map geek and always love finding new to me map collections. They just appeal to me. On that basis these are really cool. But...

These are at 1:500k? Isn't that scale a bit course for reliable off-highway navigation? For comparison, USGS Topo maps that most US citizens are familiar with for hiking/offroading are mapped at 1:24k.

 

[Sirocco]

Its a fair point Craig. We use 1:25 and 1:50 here in the UK, both of which are excellent.

North and West africa by comparison are relitively featureless (I cannot comment on south/east) so a larger scale is not such a big deal. Apart from these maps most others are 1:1mil... now thats some tough navigation!

Imagine trying to cross Africa on a series of 1:25k? Thats a lot of paper!

G

 

[cruiser guy]

These are at 1:500k? Isn't that scale a bit course for reliable off-highway navigation? For comparison, USGS Topo maps that most US citizens are familiar with for hiking/offroading are mapped at 1:24k.

Yes, but maps from other parts of the world can be hard to find in the best of times. I'd be willing to bet that for 99% of cities in Africa a map does not exist!

I lived in Guatemala for 5 years and never found a good map of the city. You slowly learned the main roads and went out from there.

Any ideas for translating Cryllic?

 

[xr8dxj]

Ummm... so what would be a good program to view these on a PC? Sorry I'm a newb to this.

 

[luangwablondes]

You need mapsource to use T4A. There is a link for free software. And then just update it.

What you can do, is see if Madmappers has topo maps of the countries you are going to, and use them as a layer in Google Earth. Then you would have that and the free T4a roads and tracks layer to use in GE. I did that with Zambia. It is time consuming to set up.

 

[craig]

Its a fair point Craig. We use 1:25 and 1:50 here in the UK, both of which are excellent.

North and West africa by comparison are relitively featureless (I cannot comment on south/east) so a larger scale is not such a big deal. Apart from these maps most others are 1:1mil... now thats some tough navigation!

Imagine trying to cross Africa on a series of 1:25k? Thats a lot of paper!

G

So many maps is why a laptop based product makes sense whether it be Overland Navigator, Ozi Explorer, or any of the others out there. Wish I had an Overland Navigator map-pack put together for Africa but the US alone is a formidable task for one person.

Craig

 

[gjackson]

Look at what T4A does. They involve the overland community in mapping, and have a phenomenal product because of that. It would be neat if someone here could do something similar.

www.tracks4africa.com

 

[luangwablondes]

With MAPA's additions to the T4A map last year, covering Southern and East Africa, and this year, their mapping of the parks and conservation areas in West Africa, the T4A map coverage is excellent for the average overlander. They are continually updating and adding information to the map--- it isn't just about gpsr accurate roads and tracks.

A measure of their quality and success, are the copycats using T4A maps as their own and repackaging them under their own label. Yep, lots of copyright infringements.

 

[redbeard]

http://africamap.harvard.edu/ also has some of these same sources listed.

I cant seem to download many of the maps from the madmappers.com site. anyone have any luck with this?

 

[gjackson]

I got the whole set down, but that was back when I made the original post. Haven't checked it lately.

cheers