PLSS Grid v0.8

Features in full

PLSS is how ground is referenced in the western United States for wildland fire and public-land operations -- division assignments, drop points, contingency lines. ATAK ships MGRS and USNG grid lines but nothing for PLSS.

Capabilities

• Township and section boundaries as a rendered GL layer, not map items, so the section layer (2.77 million polygons nationally) stays usable.
• Two zoom tiers: townships with their T/R label, then sections with their numbers, each appearing only when large enough to carry its label.
• Toggled from Overlay Manager alongside Grid Lines, and from the plugin pane.
• Color selection per tier: township lines and labels together, section lines and numbers together. The label backdrop flips automatically between dark and light so any chosen color stays readable.
• Go-to-township lookup by principal meridian, township and range.
• Works fully offline once data is installed.

Source data is the BLM National PLSS CadNSDI, which is the authoritative survey record. USGS products derive from it.

A step-by-step user guide with screenshots lives at docs/USER_GUIDE.md in the repository, with the images under docs/screenshots/ (both excluded from the source submission zip).

Equipment required

Android device supported by ATAK-CIV 5.6, 5.7 or 5.8. Storage for the data packs the operator installs. Packs are per state and range from about 6 MB to 124 MB; a typical western operating area of three or four states is under 100 MB.

Works with

Any Android device supported by ATAK. No additional or external hardware, no sensors, no peripherals.

Network and security

(This is important for ATO, networking, and other security concerns)

Outbound TCP 443 (HTTPS) only, and only when the operator explicitly requests a data download.

The plugin ships with no map data. On first use the operator opens the data manager, which fetches a small JSON manifest over HTTPS and then downloads the state packs the operator selects. Downloads are resumable and each pack is verified against a SHA-256 digest published in the manifest before it is installed.

No inbound ports. No listening sockets. No traffic to or from the TAK server, and no CoT is generated or consumed. The plugin does not contact the BLM service at runtime -- BLM is queried offline by the tools in tools/ when the data packs are built.

After the packs are installed the plugin makes no network calls at all and functions with the device in airplane mode.

More on GitHub →