Aerial calibration and the sides
An aerial view marked as aerial (the satellite button) needs to be told where the building is and which side is Alpha. Everything the drill does with sides reads from that.
Open the aerial view in the builder and press Set sides in the toolbar. Two clicks do the whole job; switch between them with the buttons above the image, and press Done calibrating to go back to placing elements.
Calibration is a mode on the view, not a replacement for it: an aerial takes elements like any other view, so you can park apparatus on it and calibrate it without choosing between the two.
Center#
Click the structure itself. This sets the point where the quadrant dividers converge.
The default is the middle of the image, which is almost always wrong. Aerial photos are framed on an address, not centered on a building, and a house set back from the road or on a corner lot will sit well off center. If the dividers converge in the yard instead of on the structure, the quadrant labels will disagree with what crews see.
Ⓐ Side A#
Click the side of the building that faces the address, the side you would give as the front on the radio.
Sides B, C, and D follow clockwise from there, which is the standard convention. You do not set them individually.
Checking it#
After both clicks the image shows the dividers converging on your center point, with A, B, C, and D labeled around the structure. Read it the way a crew would: if the label on the driveway side says C when everyone calls it A, click Ⓐ again on the correct side.
Both marks can be re-clicked at any time, and the change is saved immediately.
Why it matters#
The quadrant layout drives what crews and command see during a drill:
- The side a crew arrives on. With the apparatus placement module on, crews park their own rig on this image and walk out onto the side of the wedge they parked in. With it off, the same wedges read the rigs you placed. Either way the wedges decide where people end up.
- The wedges are drawn on the aerial during the drill, so a crew choosing where to set up can see which side is which.
- The IC reads position reports against this map, and draws on it.
If calibration is wrong, none of that is wrong in an obvious way. It is just quietly misleading, which is worse. It takes two clicks; do them when you add the view.
If you do not calibrate#
An uncalibrated aerial still shows, and you can still place elements on it. What it cannot do is answer which side anything is on, so no crew is arrived onto a side: they stay where they are, and the wedges are not drawn.
That is deliberate. Guessing would put every crew on the address side and look like it had worked. Any scenario using the apparatus placement module should be calibrated, and the Set sides button stays highlighted until it is.