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PostPosted: 20 Dec 2011 09:26 
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Joined: 28 Mar 2011 03:35
Posts: 83
I visited the Poehali site yesterday to gather Russian topo maps for a couple of potential projects, to be greeted by the message that their download service ceased on the 15th December and that you now need to use the Mapstor site. As it happened, the old processes to get the maps, selecting from the overview map and entering the "captcha" still worked, but for how much longer who knows.

I did check out Mapstor but so far as I can tell (the site is in Russian with very little English), there's no free download service and you need to buy the maps or sets of maps that you want. I would be very wary of giving any credit or debit card details to a Russian site, regardless of how authentic it seems (maybe they accept Paypal).

A shame to see it go as the Russian maps were incredibly useful for doing historical routes (e.g. Balkan narrow gauge) or those areas where Open Street and Google haven't penetrated very deeply. Do we know of any other source for these maps?


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PostPosted: 20 Dec 2011 10:12 
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Joined: 05 Jan 2011 16:45
Posts: 1463
Yes, it still works.

[OT]I downloaded the Eritrean stuff a year ago, should I ever find the time to model the Asmara-Massawa narrow gauge. I started years ago in Zusi 2, using first generation ASTER DEMs and a 1:500,000 Soviet topo map which I had to purchase in paper form from an outdoor retailer. Poehali, however, had collected and offered the 1:200k series as well. Some rumours say there should be a 1:100k for East Africa, too, but I could never get confirmation for this. Google Earth coverage of the area is also quite good apart from a single gap of 10km. My data collection also comprises of GPS tracklogs which include elevation. However, it wasn't a SIRF III chipset yet and calibration was less than perfect. [/OT]

BTW, Mapstor has an English language version and they do accept PayPal. http://mapstor.com/faq.html

They also seem to have the complete 200k set of Madagascar. I might be tempted...


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PostPosted: 28 Dec 2011 09:25 
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Joined: 28 Mar 2011 03:35
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Sadly when I tried to access the old Poehali page yesterday, it took me straight to the Mapstor page which after searching definitely seems to have no free option for obtaining the maps.

Oh well, it was good while it lasted.


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PostPosted: 24 Sep 2013 15:18 
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Joined: 28 Mar 2011 03:35
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Good news - it appears the Russian topographic maps have resurfaced via this site (interactive map):

http://www.topomapper.com/index.html?zo ... =20.965556 (Example set to Kicevo in Macedonia). Just make sure topo is selected in the RH flyout.

No doubt Roland can advise whether there is any means of downloading these maps direct into Transdem, failing that screen clippings will more than suffice!


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PostPosted: 25 Sep 2013 13:41 
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Joined: 05 Jan 2011 16:45
Posts: 1463
BigVern wrote:
Good news - it appears the Russian topographic maps have resurfaced via this site (interactive map):
I think this site has been around for quite some time. Unfortunately, what looks like Map Tiles, is actually some sort of WMS with pre-rendered tiles, and using the WMS protocol in a very obscure manner to access them. TransDEM cannot emulate this. A separate standard exists, called WMTS, to combine WMS with the Map Tile de-facto standard. Its acceptance is rather low, though, presumably because of too many parameters (and I haven't even attempted yet to implement it).

How about taking screenshots and georeference via grid lines? I'm afraid I couldn't figure out what the grid lines represent, Pulkovo/Krasovsky, lat/long or something different altogether.

For my own purposes I went to that Ukrainian website, and downloaded the sheets one by one. That collection is a bit thin on the larger scale maps, but for my recent Transsib trip I was more than happy with the 500k series and a few 200k. TransDEM on a netbook, GPS receiver connected via USB, and you could follow the train journey through the topography of Siberian taiga or Mongolian steppe. The vector maps, including OSM (which I had on the GPS unit), don't tell you much about the terrain. Even for China, which has changed a lot since the Soviet maps were printed, they still proved helpful. With them, we had plenty of advance warning for the spectacular canyon when approaching Beijing on the Datong line.


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