Thank you for your suggestions.

I'll use the mailing list - but I must be more disciplined and finish one job before branching out, and I have enough backlog to keep me going for at least two weeks.

A mapping party sounds good. Do I need to contact individuals (if so, how do I locate them), or would an invitation on the mailing list be enough to get it started?

Regards
Dolphin3900

I'll be away for a week, but will bring my trusty Garmin eTrex and notebook, and make tracks as much as possible of Waterford and Tramore, which are (almost) virgin territory to OSM.

New Zealand has three PDF files of lights at http://www.hydro.linz.govt.nz/lights/nill.pdf and http://www.hydro.linz.govt.nz/lights/sill.pdf and http://www.hydro.linz.govt.nz/lights/cill.pdf.
But I cannot parse PDF files to extract useful data - what I get (when I copy and paste to Excel) is one Excel row per PDF field, with no reliable way of telling which column the data belongs to.

The good folks in NZ disclaimer/copyright notice (http://www.linz.govt.nz/home/disclaimer/index.html) says:
"Disclaimer
The information provided on this website is intended to be general information only. While considerable effort has been made to ensure that the information provided on this site is accurate, current and otherwise adequate in all respects, LINZ does not accept any responsibility for content and shall not be responsible for, and excludes all liability for any claims whatsoever arising from the use of this site.
Crown Copyright
Land Information New Zealand owns the Crown copyright in the material available for viewing or downloading from this website as provided in the Copyright Act 1994.
The material may be used, copied and re-distributed free of charge in any format or media. Where the material is redistributed to others the source and copyright status must be acknowledged."

Sorry Steve, and you're right OJW: When I said "The Online list of lights omits ... Lat & Lon", I meant the Trabas website, not the OSM file.

Oops! The Online list of lights omits one of the most important pieces of data about lights: Lat and Lon

Steve, I've e-mailed my contact in CIL to find out where they get their data.

In the meantime, I've seen other collections of lighthouses in Google Earth, including:
Estonia http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=modEarthTourism&Number=850567&Searchpage=1&Main=763083&Words=+Dolphin3900&topic=&Search=true#Post850567

Iceland has a pdf file at http://www.lhg.is/upload/files/Vitaskra_2006.pdf

New Zealand http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/229846/page/

And, best of all, Alex Trabas (webmaster/author of The Online List of Lights, which covers a large portion of the world) is interested, and I'm in contact with him about re-formatting his collection for OSM. See http://www.trabas.de/html/enleuchtfeuerindex.html for the turf (correction: surf) that he covers. He is in process of re-building his website so don't hold your breath.

Hi OJW, Unfortunately I won't have time to finish preparing for upload, and will be away for over a week starting this weekend - sorry. I'm working through the notices to mariners to make sure it is as up-to-date as possible.

Steve: Excellent proposal, and it's good to see that you got the IALA-A/B difference. Talking about UK/US differences, should it mention variant spellings of colour/color?

Hi Finnán

Welcome to OSM from another "newbie" (almost 60 years old, but only started in OSM a week ago), and the best of luck with your work!

Go n-eirí an bóthar leat!

[For foreign readers, that's a Gaelic (Irish language) wish which translates literally "may the road rise with you" but a more colloquially as "may your road/way/journey succeed" of "may you succeed", or simply "Good luck!"]

OSM would be an interesting project for any transition students, and could also form a part of local studies useful to both the students and and to the wider community.

Perhaps you could discuss this with your teacher and see if he/she could help promote the idea through your school, or even at county or national level?
Again, best of luck.

Regards
Dolphin3900

Dir is an abbreviation of Direction light, which shines a white beam of light along a safe passage, with red and green to either side. There is a good description (in English) at http://www.trabas.de/html/enleuchtfeuer.html, and (in German) at http://www.trabas.de/html/leuchtfeuer.html

Correction: I incorrectly gave the knot measurement time as 20 mins. Wikipedia says the time was 30 seconds, while 28 seconds is more accurate. But "Salty Dog Talk" (by Bill Beavis and Mike McCloskey, ISBN 0-7136-6400-2, published by Adlard Coles Nautical) gives the distance and time as 24'4" and 15 seconds, explaining that they are 1/240 of a nautical mile and of an hour, respectively.

There is also an excellent book called "The Barefoot Navigator" (by Jack Lagan, ISBN 0-7136-7429-6 and 987-0-7136-7429-3, also published by Adlard Coles Nautical) describing the methods and achievemnts of the Pacific Islanders, Vikings, Pharoahs & Phoenicians, Arabs, and Chinese, and giving detailed techniques and tools for "no-tech" and "lo-tech" navigation.

Wikipedia had an interesting chart/map showing tidal amplitude variations around the world, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:M2_tidal_constituent.jpg, as part of the article on Tide, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide

To answer most of your questions:

Daymarks describe the shapes of the buoys
- CAN Canister (cylindrical)
- CON Conical
- NUN cylindrical, but the topmost portion narrows to form a cone.
- HFP/ISDANG I will have to check out
- PEC/PNC/PSC/PWC East/Nort/South/West Cardinal marks (sorry I don't know what the "P" stands for)
- PreChMk I wonder if this is a typing error.
- Spher Spherical
- Special non-standard colour (not the red or green of channel markers or black & yellow of cardinal marks.

Multiple figures in nominal ranges: There is a number for each colour in multi-colour lights. Ranges are given in nautical miles (approx 1 minute of latitude, or exactly 1852 meters)

"Green lantern" the lantern is the frame or housing that contains the light. Lights are white, unless stated otherwise in the "Character" field.

Heliport: They do not include lights. Most of them are located near lighthouses

Converting sea levels is an extremely difficult process because the tide height varies around the world, and the difference between spring and neap tides also varies.

Abbreviations used describing a light's Character
- Fl: Flasing, lit <50% of the time
- Iso: 50/50 dark and light
- Occ: Occulting, lit >50% of the time
- Dir: sorry I don't know, will try to find out.
- VQ very quick
- LFl Long Flash
- Q Quick (50-79 per minute, usually 50/60)
- IQ (Interrupted Quick - bursts of Quick, with interruptions)
- VQ Very Quick (80-159 per minute, usually 100/120)
- IVQ Interrupted VQ
- UQ Ultra Quick (160 or more, usually 240-300)
- IUQ Interrupted UQ

Hi OJW,

While I don't claim to be an expert on maritime navigation or lighthouses, I can probably answer some of your questions.

A little bit of background about maritime navigation: It is difficult to know one's position accurately out on the open seas where there are no fixed marks. The standard traditional navigation method (pre GPS) is by "dead reckoning", starting from a known position (departure harbour) and following a known direction (magnetic compass bearing) at a known speed (measured by throwing a log overboard and counting the knots on the cord while a 20-minute hourglass-style timer counted down - speed is measured in knots, nautical miles per hour). This gives vectors (direction and distance) which can be pencilled in on a chart (maritime map). Corrections are made to allow for tidal currents and for magnetic deviation (difference between magnetic north and true north) and for any known errors in the vessel's compass, and allowance is also made for leeway (a boat, particularly a sailing boat, attempting to sail, say, west in a south wind, keeps the bow pointed westwards, but the wind will cause some side-slip towards the north). So there is plenty of scope for error, and for cumulative error, requiring methods for double-checking.

Before the invention of accurate chronometers, you could verify your latitude by measuring the angular height of the sun over the horizon at noon, or using a known star, particularly Polaris (the North star). Later, when more accurate chronometers were available, accurate measurements of sunrise/sunset (and moonrise/set) allowed you to verify longitude.

Even since the arrival of GPS, mariners are encouraged to use dead reckoning as their primary navigation tool, in case of problems in the GPS system, which could be anything from a flat battery in the receiver to a GPS system shut-down due to American military priorities. It is recommended to use the GPS only as a verification system.

Mariners arrived at their destinations with quite a degree of uncertainty. Lighthouses were (and still are) the most important fixed reference marks, and must be identifiable by day or by night (whatever time you arrive).

Arrival during daylight hours allowed identification using a description of the lighthouse (structure, shape, height, colours).

Arrival during night-time hours is also catered for, because lighthouses have unique characters - the character of a lighthouse is a description of the light frequency and timing (and colour, if relevant). "Fl 5s" means "Flashing every 5 seconds"; "Q(3) 10s" means "quick groups of 3 flashes every 10 seconds"; "FL WRG 5s" means "Flashing white red green every 5 seconds"; "Occ" (occulting) means that the light is visible most of the time, but darkened (occulted) briefly.

So, the most important data about a lighthouse (or other navigation mark), in order of priority are:
1. Name (everything needs a handle)
2. lat and lon. location is paramount
3. Structure, for day-time identification
4. Character, for night-time identification
5. Range (distance from which the light is visible in normal conditions)

Most lighthouses have auxiliary/secondary lights that operate if there is a problem with the main/primary light.

Some lighthouses have colour filters fitted so that light in different directions shows as different colours. This is the "sector" information, and can be useful in identifying the correct approach line (channel) for a harbour.

AIS (Automatic Identification System) is used mainly in Vessel Traffic Schemes, whereby each vessel (or lighthouse) transmits details about its identity, location, heading and speed)

Someof the details shown for lighthouses are given purely as matters of interest (e.g. date built) but a few fields are due to more modern technology, for instance:

- DGPS (Differential GPS) gives improved accuracy (5-10 meters), by comparing the GPS-measured position against the known position, and transmitting the difference via MF RDF radio transmissions

- RACON (RAdar beaCON) is a system whereby transponders transmit extra radar "responses" when incoming radar signals are detected, easily identified on the sending radar system. Usually the extra response correspends to the morse code for a particular letter.

Hope this is some help. Please let me know if you have any further questions, and I'll do my best to get you an answer.

Regards
Dolphin3900

I've tried "save as" in IE to save your .osm file, using a filename ending in .osm and also .txt, but when I open the file again with notepad, it looks wrong, with vertical bars instead of line-breaks, and JOSM cannot open the files. I also tried "Edit with notepad" (in IE "file" menu) and tried to save as txt and osm files, but same problem. I also tried (in IE) right-clicking on the URL and "save target as" - again the same problem (vertical bars instead of line breaks)
Copy & paste into Notepad is quite satisfactory, and allows the option to ensure the coding is ANSI

By the way, I discovered that when using Notepad to save .osm files, you have to use ANSI encoding (not UTF-8, which GE uses) or JOSM will give an error opening the file.
The data that I placed in the .osm file came from IE, using it to "download" OJW's file, then copying/pasting the contents into Notepad.

Thank you StefanB - that worked. I have JOSM up and running now - all I need to do is learn how to use it.

Thank you too OJW for the file conversions and the tag discussion.

I couldn't use JOSM to download OJW's converted file (got a message saying the max bbox size was 0.25), but I did download the file to my PC and JOSM was able to open it from there.

Now, back to learning more about using JOSM

Regards
Dolphin3900

Wow, yet more responses!

Again, thank you all - much appreciated.

robx: first to comment, and I understood at least the first half of what you said - obviously I still have some learning to do.

StefanB: Kosmos sounds good, and I'll check it out, but first I want to get JOSM working (see comments below). And thank you for the offer to help.

Steve Hill: thank you for thinking ahead - I'll come back to your comments when I get over the basics. Gotta walk before I run.

TomH: I've looked in GPSbabel, and can't find any mention of OSM XML, but OJW has already solved that problem (see below)

rorym: I'll come back to that when I get over the JOSM hurdle. Go raibh míle maith agat (a thousand thanks)

OJW: thank you for the conversion - I had already converted the KML to GPS XML, and started work on installing JOSM: and then my problems started. No problem downloading JOSM, but when I tried to open (run) it, a Nokia application kicked in (for installing apps on mobiles). I stopped it, and looked for another way to install JOSM, but without success (so far). The download file is not self-executing, and I don't know what app will install it. You're also right about checking that the data is correct. There have been some changes published in "Notices to Mariners" that I need to incorporate. And thank you for the kind offer to help.

Mackerski: Poolbeg lighthouse (like several other AtoNs on the approaches to Dublin harbour) is maintained by Dublin Port Company. There are some other missing entries as well. Larne has a similar local organisation that "does its own thing", also Dun laoghaire, Dundalk, Galway, Limerick, Londonderry, Waterford, Rosslare and Wicklow. I can get the info from sources like Reed's Almanac, but that is copyright protected. :(

The install instructions for JOSM don't give any detail about what app to use - so I need to search a bit more to find that answer... Seems I need to install some Java first. Here goes, searching...

Regards
Dolphin3900

2nd Fav Quote: "the day you stop learning is the day they shovel six feet of earth over you"

Phew! Quite a few helpful suggestions there!
It will take some time to go through all the ideas and options.
It seems that my best approach , for starters, would be to use JOSM. I have GPS-Babel (with GPS Babel GUI, an excellent Windows front-end) and I have already used that to convert the AtoN data from KML to GPX XML.
Now - to get JOSM and
(1) download some examples and see what they contain, and
(2) import some GPX samples and see if they work.
(3) upload a few lighthouses and check them.
The CIL data is not copyright protected, but I contacted them anyhow (just in case that was an oversight on their website). Their original reply to my request was "There is no copyright issue with publishing data from our website." I'll take another look through the OSM copyright documentation to check that is OK.
Thank you all, your help is much appreciated.
Regards
Dolphin3900