I was given the task recently of creating a map with aircraft range rings centered on my home airport. We were comparing two different types of aircraft and wanted to see visually what extra destinations would be available to us with another aircraft. I mentioned making the map briefly in my previous post about 85% Boeing Winds.

Now I have a secret. I just happen to run another forum and website about Global Mapper. Global Mapper is a very useful mapping program that allows you to do just a thing (plus a whole lot more). I posted this tutorial and video on the other site but was thinking to myself that some pilots here may want to be able to create a map like that as well. So I uploaded the video to Youtube and I am posting it for you here. It honestly took me less than 10 minutes to create this map, the program is that easy.

You can download a trial version of Global Mapper by clicking here. This trial version is fully functional (with some export limitation) but will allow to create a map like this.  The download is about 21 MB.

You can learn more about Global Mapper and download some of the files I used to create this map by visiting the Global Mapper Forum.  Just go to the download section.

Fly Safe.