Vertical Angles for locating fires, smokes and other objects

[Daniel]

am a summer fire lookout and look for smoke. I identify its map location as best I can and then call the report into a fire dispatch.

Among other tools I locate smokes using a bearing from true north from my location and also a vertical angle from my lookout tower. It is easy enough to use the bearing to locate the smoke as being somewhere on that line radiating out from my tower and I have used Topo 5.0 to do that but I haven't figured out a way to use the vertical angle with that software. I would like to know if Topo 7.0 provides any way to use that datum.

To provide a bit more information as I am not sure whether the meaning of vertical angle is obvious or known to non-lookouts, a zero vertical angle points to positions which would be at the same altitude as my lookout vantage point (disregarding earth curvature). A positive angle points to higher positions and a negative angle points to lower positions. The combination of a bearing and vertical angle should point to a unique position on the earth and map.

I am also posting this to the Topo 5.0 group.

Thanks in advance for the help.

Daniel

Moderator note: To keep all discussion in one thread, please respond using the link below. This topic will be locked.
http://forum.delorme.com/viewtopic.php?t=13802

.