TAFL To Go
----------


TAFL To Go is a collection of nearly 300,000 POIs (points of interest)
that are generated from Industry Canada's non-protected TAFL records.

Each POI represents one license record and will display the
TX frequency and (truncated) licensee name.


These files are designed for Garmin's nuvi product line and can be
uploaded to compatible Garmin devices by using Garmin's free POI Loader
application (Google it if you don't already have it).

Uploading to other manufacturers' devices may require that you
translate these files to a compatible format for the target device.


If you already have a collection of POIs, you can just add the zipfile
contents to your POI directory tree and use POI Loader to upload everything
to your device.

If you've never used POI Loader, just create a folder and dump the
zipfile contents (a handful of of .bmp icons and .csv data files) in to it,
then point POI Loader at the folder.

The .csv files are sorted by longitude, so if you don't want to stuff
your GPSr, you can edit them and keep only the longitude range of interest.


The POI icons are color coded as follows:

  Blue     0 to 399.99999 MHz licenses

  Green    400 to 699.99999 MHz licenses

  Yellow   700 to 999.99999 MHz licenses (excluding cellular)

  Orange   microwave licenses; 1 to 99.99999 GHz, excluding PCS

  White    cellular / PCS licenses

If you want to, you can change the color relationships by shuffling
the names of the icon files - it ain't rocket surgery.
If you are a rocket surgeon, you can find or make replacement icons;
just keep their size at or below 17x22 pixels, otherwise they'll overlap.

On a nuvi, these icons should be visible at
the 20m, 30m, 50m and 80m zoom levels in 2D and 3D display modes.


Where multiple licenses would normally overlap on the display
(e.g. multiple licenses at a site), the POIs have been spread out
in a straight line and sorted by frequency.  The lowest frequency license
is located at the origin point and the remaining licenses run in a line
to the east.  It ain't pretty, but it works (sort of).  I'll fix it later...


You will find that a significant number of these POIs don't show up
on the map exactly where they should; there are a few reasons for this -
for starters, license applications only specify coordinates to the nearest
second; this alone can introduce an error of 100 feet (30 meters) or so.

Then there's the fact that up until recently, IC specified that coordinates
in license applications were to use the outdated NAD 27 datum, even though
the GPSrs that licensees use to determine these coordinates typically
default to displaying coordinates in the NAD 83 / WGS 84 datum.
When IC joined the 90's and switched to the NAD 83 datum, they took all
of their "NAD 27" data (a lot of which was really NAD 83 data from GPSrs)
and converted it to NAD 83.  Running NAD 83 values through the
NAD27-->NAD83 converter shifts them on the map by 150 feet or more,
so if a site shows up across the street from where it should, that's
probably why.  As time permits, I'll try to undo the damage that this
bogus conversion has caused.

And then we have the problem that some licensees are, shall we say,
coordinate-challenged - their site shows up on the map two blocks from
where it should.  Go figure.


These POI files will be updated monthly.  The exact date will depend on
when IC gets their act in gear and updates the national data files on their
site (sometimes it takes them most of a week).


If you have any questions or comments,
send them to wap@ica.net / slicerwizard@gmail.com