I was playing around with google earth a few weeks ago, looking at some track logs and discovered a feature that I was not aware of. Many or all of you may already know about this, but I thought I would share it just in case there were others that were not aware of this. When you are looking at a track log in google earth, right click in the track and select show elevation profile. As you slide your courser across the elevation profile, it indicates the corresponding location on your track log. It is really pretty interesting and give you the ability to quickly drill down on some additional details on your flight. Below is a screen shot showing the elevation profile from a recent flight.
I realize there is a good chance that everyone already knew about this feature.
Matt,
You can also do this with the "Ruler" and "Path" tools. I often to this to understand how the ridge will work i.e. figure out the elevation profile of the windward ridge and the slope of the ridge at various points. Very helpful for flight planing.
With the Ruler tool draw a line or path, save it, then right click on it and select show elevation profile.
Matt,
I didn't know about the elevation profile till your post.....I freaking love google earth!!! I think there is a ton a stuff that i still don't know about that program that can be directly useful to pre and post flight analysis.
I also suggest using the following web site http://www.maddyhome.com/igc2kml/convert.do to convert your IGC files to KML or KMZ. If you use flychart or others you don't get altitude color coding i.e. the flight is all the same color. I did this for all the Highland Challenge files and it worked well.
