Historic Aerial Photo Resources

interestingly enough, there is a bite taken out of the 1940's image on dcda where the radar research station at swanage was!

Memory Map (or Anquet) are usefull tools for mapping but I've not used them much for aerial photo views since far better quality views are available online.
I have the current OSGB 1K50 and 1K25 mapping on all my PCs and phones and might add some of the historical maps when I have spare cash.

Why I use Memory Map....
OSGB maps wherever I am,
overlays of interesting things (fuel depots, airfields, green lanes, cathedrals etc) so if I have spare time I can quickly check to see if any of those are near enough for a detour. Overlay files can have embedded info, weblinks etc)
Dual view of aerial photo and map

Things like google earth have overtaken some aspects now but I'm used to using Memory Map so am likely to continue!

The aerial photos that come with Memory map tend to be really low-res ones from about 2000 and really aren't that detailed. You're better off with Google Earth or Flash Earth for that.

The aerial photos I have are from the 1944-49 photo recce ops and their very high res - more than what you get on Getmapping or UK Aerial photos.

As tigger says, what its useful for is having multiple maps on hand that you can swap between, especially if you export them to a PDA. I have a lot of my site plans, 25:000 and 10:000 maps and aerial photos imported to mine and combined with the GPS function it makes finding stuff and tracking where I've been a doddle. The number of times I've found overgrown

Another useful aspect is the inbuilt mapping coordinate conversion (Lat/Long to National Grid/Landranger), the ability to track your route and measure out specific areas. Handy for finding scatter fields where you only know the general location and how many acres of land the RAF procured.

All in all it's designed as a route planning/tracking tool but it has a lot of other uses as well.

There seem to be a few copies of Memory Map on eBay and such but I'm not sure how "legit" they are.

There are two popular editions - the OS and Pro versions which have some subtle differences.

The Pro version has more tools and such in it and works with a variety of maps from various sources including the CAA and OS to name a few.

The OS edition is targeted more towards the OS specific maps and has somewhat more updates than the other version as its targeted more at home users and those that venture into the great outdoors. Be aware though that as they update the OS edition they disabled support for older issues of the OS maps which effectively forces you to upgrade to newer map packages to use it.

OneEighthBit;36244 wrote:

.......Be aware though that as they update the OS edition they disabled support for older issues of the OS maps which effectively forces you to upgrade to newer map packages to use it.

Older maps work with the new software...newer maps don't work with the older software (the limitation is to do with OSGB licensing but it's easy to get around this if need be)

The Getmapping site now has viewable Historic Aerials as another date tab on their viewer.

Ok i have just used this Getmapping for the first and unsurprisingly I wanted to check out RAF Aston Down. The main reason was to see if if they had aerial images after 1946, as that is the latest aerial photograph i have. I know there are actually more and the OS took some, but they don't exisit as prints in the NMR archive. I'm thinking due to security issues? There was a rotodyne test facility there in the 1950's. Anyway Getmapping didn't BUT they did have 1940-1947, and there is no airfield!! The dispersed Robin Hangars are there, the D/F tower is there as is some outlying airfield buildings. Its like they have altered the photograph to show just fields!!!! If it was pre-1946 images then at least the First World War airfield would show up.

Has anyone else noticed this?

Brilliant thanks, just read the thread....so it wasn't me going mad after all then