Viewing UAVSAR Flight Plans (continued)

KML files for individual flight lines

To view these files in Google Earth, first download the KML file for an individual flight line from the website.

Figure 2: UAVSAR website showing links to view files in Google Earth.

Now, open this file in Google Earth. You should see something like this (you may need to zoom in, (see tutorial on using Google Earth.)

Figure 3: Initial view of an individual flight line.

Notice that under Places in the "Temporary Places" folder on the left hand side, there is a check box for this flight line ID. There are several things you can do at this point to more carefully inspect this flight line (zooming in, tilting and rotating the view is described in this tutorial):

• You can click on each waypoint to find out the position and set up of the radar at that point. A window will appear with the coordinate (Lat/Lon and altitude) of the waypoint, and a web link to a file containing the detailed set up of the radar at that point. The waypoints are defined as follows:
  
  • PRE - This is the start of the line for the aircraft
  
  
  • STA - This is the start of radar transmission and operation. If the Short BIT test is enabled. It begins here. (the duration of the Short BIT is indicated by a Yellow flight line color). The image swath acquisition occurs at the end of the Short BIT test.
  
  
  • RSU - This Radar Status Update occurs if necessary (if the Data Window Position Needs to compensate for ground topography, or if the expected brightness of the target indicates the need for a change in the gain of the receivers)
  
  
  • STO - This is the point at which data acquisition completes
  
  
  • POS - This is where the flight line for the aircraft ends
  
  
• 30° - The look angle is indicated at the start of the image swath, in 10 degree increments. Clicking on these markers will bring up a window indicating the horizontal distance to the nadir track of aircraft.



• clicking on the target placemark will reveal a window with the latitude and longitude of the target, the horizontal distance to the aircraft nadir, the range, elevation, and look angle to the target, and a web link to any descriptive information.



• At the beginning of the flight line, near the PRE waypoint, the flight line ID (typically the flight heading is the first three digits, followed by a 2 digit number) will be indicated. (This appears and disappears as you change your orientation relative to this point)

On the left hand side, under Places ‘Temporary Places’ folder, there is a folder called ‘Flight Line ID: #####’ where ##### is the flight line ID for this flight line. This folder can be expanded by clicking on the arrows (and etc. for each folder within this folder).

Figure 4: Turning features on and off using the left hand side Places "Temporary Places" Flight line ID folder.

There are 7 sub folders to the Flight line folder (see Figure 4 above). They are

• Flight Line for #....
  • By checking this folder on and off, you can control whether or not the flight line of the aircraft appears.
• Waypoints for the flightline
  • By checking this folder on and off, you can control whether or not the waypoints for the flight line appear.
• Illumination for #...
  • By checking this folder on and off, you can control whether or not the near and far slant range illumination appears. This also is turned on and off depending on your distance from the image swath in Google Earth.
• Nadir Path for Flight Line #...
  • By checking this folder on and off, you can control whether or not the Nadir path image (a color coded line corresponding to the nadir topography of the aircraft) is displayed. When viewed from a large distance by Google Earth, it will be turned off.
• Simulated image for Flight Line ….
  • By checking this folder on and off, you can control whether or not the simulated SAR image with topographic contours using color bars is displayed. When viewed from a large distance by Google Earth, it will be turned off.
• GCP’s for Flightline …
  • By checking this folder on and off, you can control whether or not the predefined targets in the image are displayed.

Figure 5: Placemarks separate if there is more than one at the same spot.

Next: Viewing KML files for the entire flight in Google Earth (page 3).

Previous: Viewing UAVSAR flight plans (page 1).

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