I agree with John. I think the small dark images on the hit site are
just for reference. I believe the concept is for you to download the
kml file and plug in the hit coordinates into GE. Then browse that
area. I also found that if you do a print screen of the area, load it
into a photo processor and brighten the image, it helps. Also, the
ruler can be put to good use in GE. If you find anything interesting,
you can measure it to see if it's in the ballpark for a plan wreckage.

Here's an example:

http://images5.fotopic.net/?iid=yorp...ze=1&nostamp=1

All I did was lighten the screen shot a little and annotate the picture.
The splotch is about 22 feet long using the GE ruler. I'm sure it's
nothing - probably just a rock ;-) But it serves as an example of how
one can use GE, the ruler and the coordinate system to locate possibilities.

I also found that once the kml file was loaded into GE, it became very
sluggish - much more so than normally using GE. Maybe my machine is
lacking - Win-XP SP2, 1 gig of RAM, 3 GHz processor. I'm sure more RAM
would help.

Arthur Hass
Reston, VA

John Tyson wrote:
wrote in message ...
In sci.geo.satellite-nav John Tyson wrote:
Clarence, did you notice any discrepancy in the dimensions you saw in
Google Earth vs. those they are showing in the "hit" images? Seemed to
me they differed by almost a factor of two on the few I looked at.
The image shown on the web site is too small and dark for me to think
much about it. I noticed that they indicate the image is roughly 278 feet
square, but that has nothing to do with the initial zoom when you "fly to"
the coordinate in Google Earth. My initial zoom shows a ruler of 948
feet,
and an eye altitude of 3281 ft. They suggest an eye altitude of 1500 feet
for Google Earth. The hit that I just accepted is near some houses, so I
have some judgment of whether I would be able to spot a car or small
aircraft. If they expect people to just review the image on the web page,
that seems fairly worthless to me, but maybe it will work.

If he were around 37.422,-122.084 he would be easier to spot. There, I
can
zoom to a ruler size of 40 feet and still see crisp imagery.

--
Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley Lake, CA, USA GPS: 38.8,-122.5

The small images are definitely not usable. I can make out some detail on
the screen, but as you say they are almost black. Mainly though, the pixel
resolution in the images is much coarser than if you go to the Google Earth
location. I think they should probably have emphasized that in the
instructions, since some people may be trying to search the small images.
One thing I found useful, in both the presented images and the Google Earth
view, is to load the image into photoshop and enhance the contrast; on my
screen the Google Earth image is also very dark and lacks contrast. I
haven't looked, but there might be a Google Earth setting to adjust
contrast.

Per my original comment, the 278 feet seems to be closer to 350 or 400 feet
in the Google Earth imagery, so my "factor of two" was a little high.

John