Map Plotting
The 'Map Plotting' tab-page provides a range of methods to draw static maps of States, Counties, Sections, Joint Regions, and Special Regions on to the 'Vector Map' tab-page, and draw transparent polygons over the existing map in the 'Online Map' tab-page. Both map-images can be exported. The data associated with the current map is shown in the 'Tables' tab-page. That data can also be exported.
The two panels on the left of the 'Map Plotting' tab-page show the main options:
1/ 'Show a Continental Map of North America' - the buttons in this panel will always draw a continental view. The dataset used has a scale of 1:20m.
1a/ 'Show All States' - this produces a static map of States on a Continental Map. It can be colored in different ways - see below for more information.
1b/ 'Highlight the Selected State' - this is similar to (1a) but will highlight the selected state in a different color. You can choose which state this is using the control in the 'Selected State' panel.
1c/ 'Show All Sections' - this produces a static map of Sections on a Continental Map. It can be colored in different ways - see below for more information.
1d/ 'Highlight the Selected Section' - this is similar to (1c) but will highlight the selected section in a different color. You can choose which section this is using the control in the 'Selected Section' panel.
1e/ 'Show a State Map and Add the Counties for the Selected State' - this is similar to (1a) but will add counties for the selected state.
1f/ 'Show a Section Map and Add the Counties for the Selected Section' - this is similar to (1c) but will add counties for the selected section, if that section has any counties.
1g/ 'Show All Counties on a Continental Map with State Background' - this draws a continental map of counties, where each county in a state has the same color. Please set the 'Fill Color' choice to 'Six Colors' to see the correct effect. There is a lot of data to be processed, so the drawing may be slow if your computer is not very powerful.
1h/ 'Show All Counties on a Continental Map with Section Background' - this draws a continental map of counties, where each county in a section has the same color. Please set the 'Fill Color' choice to 'Six Colors' to see the correct effect. There is a lot of data to be processed, so the drawing may be slow if your computer is not very powerful.
1i/ 'Show All Counties on a Continental Map with County Background' - this draws a continental map of counties, where each county is colored individually. There is a lot of data to be processed, so the drawing may be slow if your computer is not very powerful.
2/ 'Show a State Map with Counties of the Selected State or Region' - the buttons in this panel will always draw a state or region view. You can choose the scale of the dataset: 1:20m or 1:5m in the 'Choose the Drawing Scale' panel.
2a/ 'Show a map of all Counties for the Selected State' - This will draw an isolated map of the counties of the selected state, with no neighbors. You can choose which state this is using the control in the 'Selected State' panel.
2b/ 'Show a map of all State Counties, and Highlight the Selected County' - this is similar to (2a) but will highlight the selected county in a different color. You can choose which county this is using the control in the 'Selected County' panel.
2c/ 'Show Joint Regions' - this will draw an isolated map of the counties within a joint-region selected using the control to the right of this button.
2d/ 'Show Special Regions' - this will draw an isolated map of the counties within a special-region selected using the control to the right of this button. There are two Special Regions available:
Alaska Boroughs - The US State of Alaska is divided into boroughs, which are grouped together to form four 'virtual counties'. The County-Hunting Mapper normally deals with these 'virtual counties', but if you want to identify the boroughs that underlie them, you can do so here.
Hawaii QSO Party Regions - The US State of Hawaii has five counties, and as this is the 'County Hunting' Mapper, these five counties are the ones that are normally shown for Hawaii. However, for the purposes of the annual Hawaii QSO Party, the state is split into 14 regions, which have recently been re-defined and mapped. If you want to see these regions on the 'Vector Map' or 'Online Map' pages, you can do so here. Note that the definitions of the Hawaii QSO Party Regions are based on zipcode areas.
The maps can be colored in different ways. The 'Fill Color' panel at the bottom-right lets you choose from 4 options:
1/ Outline. This plots an outline of states, sections, or counties with no fill-color.
2/ One Color. This fills all states, sections, or counties with a single color.
3/ Six Colors. This assigns one of 6 colors to each state, section, or county where no two adjacent areas have the same color. It uses the minimum number of colors to achieve this.
4/ Unique Colors. This tries to give a unique color to each region. In actuality, I think it produces at least 2920 different colors.
You can choose your own colors for each 'Outline', 'One Color' or 'Six Colors' definition, as well as the map-background, by clicking 'Help > Options > Vector Map'.