[Qgis-user] New starter on QGIS & I need help!!!!!

[DB]

Hi all,

I've just loaded Qgis under Fedora 14 to try and do some of the things 
that happen in Oziexplorer.  (I'm an official at a number of Hot Air 
Balloon competitions where Ozi is currently used for evaluating GPS tracks)

I've managed to get our (next)competition map loaded into qgis, but 
haven't yet found a way to fix the scale of the map.  It is a 50000  map 
which has been scanned to jpeg.  We also have an ozi .map file which 
would appear to my pretty much untrained eye to be the info which 
identifies the UTM coordinate system in use on the map.

My first question to you guys is... how do I tell qgis to convert the 
pixel(?) counts to UTM grid?

Assuming we can do that... does Qgis take account of two UTM bands 
meeting in the middle of our map?

And then.. if I try to measure a distance on the map (which crosses over 
the UTM bands), will the distance be correctly-ish returned in metres? 
& I guess a follow up to that is, OK, I recognise that if I mak my line 
with the mouse, it should be ok; but if i enter UTM coordinates, will 
the distance between the points be correct?

I suppose really, my first question ought to be - is Qgis the right 
program for what I want to try to do or is there something else in the 
Linux box which would be more appropriate???

Many thanks to all who have produced Qgis, it seems to be a marvellous 
piece of software (if only I understood all that it was about!)

Dave