asking for a lot of grass advice

[Robb Hill]

Hello,

A long-time lurker appears and needs help...

I am considering developing a package that will calculate signal reception for specific stations using the Longley Rice Irregular Terrain Model.  I need vector-topo data for the entire country.

1.  What are my options this data?  I suppose that I should use the DEM data from USGS?

2.  Are there C or Perl libraries for working with DEM's?  Specifically, to use Longly Rice, I have to resample the vector data to generate an elevation profile between two arbitrary points from the vector-topo data.  Any ideas on that either?

3.  When I am done I my data will be <long>,< lat>,<reception index>; which I plan on treating as a height field.  What Grass tools can I use to create an image from height field data.

4.  Also, are there any books out there to jumpstart someone who knows things like MapInfo, and Linux, but not Grass??

Any input from the group is very much appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Robb
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