You can download these cartographic sweets (all squares) in KMZ format here. If you need a specific square, find it in the layout below. There is also For ease of searching, next to each square a hint is displayed with the names of the main cities or towns within the given square.
Was once great and mighty Soviet Union, and overnight he was gone. However, he left a rich legacy - plans, various navigation products for Ukraine, Georgia, the Baltic states, and Russia. He left behind a lot of bad things, but I don’t want to remember it. Let's talk better about the good, or more precisely, about this heritage, so precious for modern travelers who tirelessly scour the CIS countries in search of adventure. Sometimes for some areas, apart from these works, there is simply no other information about the topography of the area. As you know, vector maps of Ukraine and other countries of the post-Soviet space are created and updated by enthusiasts, but not by government departments specially created for this, since departments, unfortunately, simply do not exist now.
Of course, most of these maps are old - from the 80s or even 70s, and over the past time a lot has changed and is changing - bridges disappear, new ones appear, rivers dry up, swamps appear, etc. But the reliability of these General Staff publications for Ukraine is still quite high. Of course, good modern vector maps are more suitable for orientation, but if there are no such maps for a given area and there won’t be any in the near future, then raster maps should be enough for you to navigate.
Now about how my website can help you and how this page differs from many others, where it is possible to download maps of Ukraine (USSR General Staff). Hover your mouse over the area you are interested in and a hint will appear. When you click, you will see a window with the square you are interested in, which can be scaled. On the right you will see a link “Download square”. This is a link to download a square in KMZ format. KMZ is a popular raster map format for navigators. This file format is supported by Garmin navigators and can be converted to other popular raster formats.
Good luck, friends! Have a wonderful hike!
Those who want a lot of strange things can google “Textbook on military topography.” I myself studied at the university using it. There is a ton of old and useless material for tourists.
What will happen in this article:
So, what is useful to know about GS cards and what is needed in practice.
Origin of map sheets and their nomenclature (number)
To begin with, a little repetition of what was in previous articles.
This is what it looks like:
File with extension .gif- just a picture. How you can have sex with her separately is described in paragraph 2. And the file with the extension .map- the file that the Ozi Explorer program will open will find the path to the picture specified in it (you downloaded both files into the same folder, right?) and show you a map on the monitor. The program will understand that this is a map, each of its points corresponds to some geographical coordinates. (The same two files, a picture and a .map, for each map sheet will also be available on decent distributions from torrents.)
Now everything is simple. "File-print". You indicate what scale you have, the paper format and its orientation, and that’s it. The program also allows you to print not the entire sheet, but a selected fragment.
Also, maps to scale, like Ozi Explorer, can be printed by the Global Mapper program.
If you followed one of these points, except 1a, then when printing on A4 paper you will spend 6 sheets per sheet of card, and on A3 paper 3 sheets. Moreover, most of the paper will go into scraps. And then you will need to glue the sheets from the printer into one sheet of card. It's nerdy, but fun. Not having an A3 printer at home, I used Ozi Explorer to send the card for printing to a virtual printer, which gave me PDF files, which I already carried on a flash drive to the A3 printing service near the metro.
Of course, you can print to scale, but just take an image file with a map and print it using regular using Windows on one sheet of paper (well, at least A3, otherwise it will turn out to be complete pornography) and rejoice. True, then you will already have a map without a specific scale at all. It definitely won’t work to measure distances and calculate directions either. It will only work as an overview map.
How else to determine the scale?
In the pictures above, where I drew the origin of the map sheets, the length and width of the map sheet are written in degrees. As you understand, in practice you will often receive sheets where all the information outside the map frame has been cut off, including the inscription on the scale (there was once a secrecy label there, which was removed, and a lot of other information that interfered with use maps in the electronic navigator). But the frame always remains (if the person who scanned the card is not a scoundrel), and by calculating the width or length of the sheet in angular measures from it, you can determine the scale. Another way to determine the scale of the GS map will be discussed.
General Staff maps in electronic form
When planning a trip at the computer or on the navigator screen, we deal with maps of the General Staff in in electronic format, unnatural for them.
For viewing on a computer the best one is the one I have already named SAS Planet; you can also view them on the website Routes.ru or nakarte.me.
From the screen Android smartphone: LOCUS MAP. You need to add a package of cards to it from Evgeniy, where there are GS cards and many others, or from anygis.ru. Instructions for the application from me.
In the Garmin travel navigator It is convenient to upload GS maps using the same website Routes.ru (download the kmz file and put it in the Garmin - Custom maps folder on the device. detailed instructions). You can also add JNX to Garmin as part of the halyard. Such files can be generated using the same nakarte.me or SAS Planet (instructions). In order for your navigator to display JNX files, you need to buy a subscription to their BirdsEye Satellite Imagery service from Gamine or do something with the device. I have never seen people who bought this subscription.
How to use geographic coordinates (with GPS or by astronomical observations) to find a location on a map
On many downloaded map files, you will see a border around the perimeter of the map. The frame is cool. The presence of a frame allows you to get geographic coordinates (yours or another object) with a paper map in your hands, without a computer and a pocket GPS navigator. For what? The only situation that comes to my mind is a group of tourists who had an emergency, and they do not have a GPS navigator, but they have a map of the General Staff and the ability to contact rescuers. It usually happens that there is GPS, but there is no connection. In practice, I had to do the opposite, using the coordinates in the device, and point my finger on a piece of paper at the place where we were (well, I didn’t have a map of the General Staff in the navigator in electronic form!). In one of the previous articles I already talked a little, I gave this example.
This is that rare moment when the “degrees, minutes, seconds” coordinate format comes in handy. (Read about other coordinate formats and which one is better to use)
For example. Our coordinates are 55°41’10”C 36°3’50”E. Where are we on the map?
At each corner of the map grid, the coordinates of that corner are indicated. Alternating black and white stripes indicate minutes of latitude or longitude. Dots next to the stripes are separated by tens of seconds.
Let's find the latitude first. The width of the bottom edge of the sheet is 55°40’00”, we put one more strip up. We will have 41’, and we reach the nearest point - that’s another 10”. We put a ruler there.
We perform a similar operation to find longitude. We will only move to the right from the corner of the map. The coordinates of the left edge of the sheet are 36°00’00”, we are missing 3’50” from the required 36°3’50” - that’s three stripes and five dots. We put a ruler there.
At the intersection of the lines there will be a turn in the road, which I circled in yellow.
Having determined your location on the ground and found it on the map, you can carry out the reverse operation by finding your coordinates. You just need to draw perpendiculars to the vertical and horizontal boundaries of the map, and then count the required number of stripes and dots from the corners of the map. The resulting coordinates... well... uh... dictate to the rescuers, probably.
Rectangular (kilometer) grid coordinates and Plane rectangular coordinates
Every textbook, presentation of tourist clubs and gurus in cartography considers it their duty to talk about it, to waste the darkness of their own and other people’s time. And only the 1977 textbook on military topography says that this garbage is used for target designation by artillerymen. Well, it's easier for them that way. The question is, why bother torturing your head with unnecessary information when the whole world and all other maps use a geographic coordinate system? Why do tourists need this system?
Yes, it gives us a coordinate grid with which we determine the scale of the map, if it is not indicated anywhere else!
Look at the numbers I circled in red. This is the number of kilometers from... Narnia/the country of the elves/the tail of the World Serpent, it doesn’t matter where from, it doesn’t change the essence, no one has been interested in their absolute meaning for a long time. Who cares?
We are interested in the difference between them. As you can see, it is 1 km. I wrote above that the coordinate grid on maps is every 2 cm. Divide 1 km by 2, it turns out 500 meters per 1 cm! This means this is a fragment of the “five hundred meter” map (1:50,000).
Sometimes, for convenience, these numbers are placed in the middle of the map and written next to the grid stripes. This allows us to determine the scale of the map even if the map frame is cropped.
Symbols on topographic maps
Common notations. Nothing complicated, but you need to watch it a couple of times. Here are a lot of pictures under the cut:
Shopping cart Place an order Continue shopping Topographic Maps
Topographic map is an integral part of long-distance hiking, mushroom picking, orienteering and quad riding over rough terrain. Legend on topographic maps such as:
Forest, urban settlements, power lines, bushes, swamps, difficult areas, dirt roads, trails, fords
and so on. will allow you to walk through the forest, away from populated areas, in a safe way. Topographic maps of the areas are offered in two formats:
- cards with extensions .ozfx, .ecw, .Gif, .png
with location references for use on personal computer(PC), laptop with the operating system Windows XP, 7, 8, as well as tablets and mobile devices
governed by operating system Android 2.2 and higher.
- Cards with extension .jnx with location references for use in tourist navigators of the company with support for the service BirdsEye.
Detailed topographic scale maps 1:25000
are now most in demand among both mushroom pickers and travelers due to the accuracy of the terrain data and other information they contain. Our online store presents topo maps in Scales:
throughout the western Russia to the Urals, including O. New Earth and partially some squares of central Russia, Siberia and the Far East of the Russian Federation.
- 1:50000 (1 cm = 500 m or 500 meters)
throughout the western Russia to the Urals, also some squares of central Russia, Siberia and the Far East of the Russian Federation.
- 1:100000 (1cm = 1km or kilometers)
throughout western Russia to the Urals, also some areas of central Russia, Siberia and the Far East of the Russian Federation.
- 1:200000 (1 cm = 2 km or 2 km)
throughout Russia, partly in neighboring countries, CIS territories, countries Western Europe and Africa.
- 1:500000 (1 cm = 5 km or 5 km)
throughout Russia, partly in neighboring countries, CIS territories, countries of Western Europe and Africa.
After the Second World War, the military triangulations of independent states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland) as well as Germany were combined into one system (triangulation network of 2, 3, 4 classes). An accurate triangulation network was necessary when creating topographic surveys on a scale of 1:25000 and small scale maps.
In the USSR, since 1942, Krasovsky's reference ellipsoid has been used. Krasovsky's ellipsoid is a reference ellipsoid, the dimensions of which were derived in 1940 at the Central Research Institute of Geodesy, Aerial Photography and Cartography (TsNIIGAiK) by Soviet geodesist A. A. Izotov based on research conducted under the general supervision of F. N. Krasovsky.
The dimensions of Krasovsky's ellipsoid were derived from degree measurements made in the territory of the former USSR, Western European countries and the USA. Although the above-mentioned degree measurements, together with the definitions of gravity, led to the conclusion that the geoid figure could be more correctly represented by a triaxial ellipsoid, the ellipsoid was nevertheless accepted as an ellipsoid of revolution.
Krasovsky's ellipsoid is characterized by the following values: semimajor axis a 6378 245 m; Earth compression 1:298.3.
The position (orientation) of the Krasovsky ellipsoid in the body of the Earth is determined by the geodetic coordinates of the center of the round hall of the Pulkovo Observatory:
latitude B0 = 59°46"18.55",
longitude L0 = 30°19"42.09",
the height x0 is set equal to zero.
Krasovsky's ellipsoid is also used in geodetic and cartographic work in all countries of the former USSR, in the countries of Eastern Europe, China, India, North Korea, South Korea, Mongolia and other countries.
In the territory of the former USSR, Russia and a number of other countries, a similar Gauss-Kruger projection is used for large-scale maps. In 1825, Carl Friedrich Gauss solved the general problem of depicting one surface on another while preserving the similarity in infinitesimal parts. Working formulas for the projection were derived by A. Kruger in 1912. This projection is conformal, or equiangular, i.e. preserves angles and directions.
In 1959-1969, the military completed a triangulation network of classes 2, 3, 4 on the territory of Lithuania, which included about 1,800 points. Maps published in the USSR since 1942 use the 1942 coordinate system or SK-42. For civilian purposes, a distorted coordinate system of 1963 or SK-63 with a shifted frame(s) was introduced.
At the end of the USSR era (1990s), the category of topographic maps included maps with scales1:1000000, 1:500000, 1:200000, 1:100000, 1:50000, 1:25000 and 1:10000. Maps with scales of 1:5000, 1:2000, 1:1000 and 1:500 were considered topographic plans.
A map at a scale of 1:1,000,000 was considered strategic, while maps at a scale of 1:500,000 and 1:200,000 were operational maps. Maps with scales of 1:100000, 1:50000 and 1:25000 made up a group of tactical maps.
In the first decades after the war, the scale of topographic survey was 1:25000; in the 1990s, the entire territory of Lithuania was covered with maps at a scale of 1:10000 with contour lines every 1.0 or 1.5 meters. Using the 1:10000 map, the map was updated to 1:25000, the relief step on the map (h) was strictly connected to the map scale: on the map 1:25000 h=5 m, 1:50000 h = 10 m, 1:100000 h=20 m.
The main geodetic and cartographic work during the war was carried out by the military. Civil organizations carried out topographic surveys on a scale of 1:10,000 (and larger) and a leveling network. Only at the end of the century maps began to be updated not by the military, but by Enterprise No.5 under the Main Directorate of Geodesy and Cartography.
Nomenclature of 1942 coordinate system maps
The nomenclature of topographic maps is based on a map at a scale of 1:1000000 (10 km in 1 cm).
The entire surface of the Earth is divided by parallels into rows (every 4°), and by meridians into columns (every 6°); the sides of the resulting trapezoids serve as the boundaries of map sheets at a scale of 1:1000000. The rows are designated by capital Latin letters from A to V, starting from the equator to both poles, and the columns are designated by Arabic numerals, starting from the 180° meridian from west to east. The nomenclature of a map sheet consists of a row letter and a column number. For example, a sheet with the city of Vilnius is designated N-35. Subpolar circular regions (with latitudes greater than 88°) are designated by the letter Z without indicating the column number. Sheets of millionth maps located between latitudes 60-76° are doubled in longitude; Thus, a sheet of a map with a scale of 1:1000000 will have a longitude length of not 6, but 12°. Above 76° the maps quadruple and occupy 24° longitude. Beyond 88° is the Z sheet, which occupies all 360°.
The double sheets of the millionth card are indicated by indicating a row (letter) and two corresponding columns (odd and subsequent even numbers). Quad sheets are formed in a similar way, the four columns are separated by commas.
On the World Wide Web Lately A huge number of cards have appeared, which, unfortunately, some sites want to sell. Our store contains only unique information products. Only here you can download a map of the Sverdlovsk region for free in just one click. We cannot hide from users what has long been in the public domain. For example, here you can find Garmin topo maps for free. A navigator is a fairly expensive purchase, so it may be that there is not enough money for maps. In any case, when you purchase such a device, you win, but for now you can use the free cards that are presented in this section.
What are Garmin Introductory Maps
This is branded software prepared by us. Professional cards, which come for a fee, have a much larger number of options. In order to understand whether they are needed, you need to establish the purpose of your trips. If it's just a trip to nature with your family, then just buy a navigator in our store and download free Garmin topographic maps. If you are engaged in serious multi-day hikes (including ATV hikes), then you will eventually have to buy professional maps.
What else can you find here?
Download free Garmin GPS maps and more. Information here will be gradually updated, we will display maps that we have prepared for free use. There are also topographic maps that were scanned a long time ago and have been freely available for more than 10 years. Essentially, everything a beginner needs is here.
