TAKevation Wizard — 1 Arc-Second Terrain for Any U.S. Area | Free Mac & Windows App for ATAK, TAK Aware & WinTAK

Open ATAK without elevation data and the ground is a lie. The 3D view is flat, viewshed and line-of-sight return nothing usable, and the coordinate readout has no altitude to show you. The fix is DTED — and getting it normally means hunting NGA archives for files you can't preview, or installing GDAL and learning a command line. TAKevation Wizard is the short way: pick an area on a map, press build, and get the files ATAK expects.

WHY IT'S IN THE SHOP

Every overlay in this store puts points on a map. None of them tell you what the ground does between those points. Elevation is what turns a marker into a position you can reason about — whether you can see it, whether it can see you, what the climb costs. TAKevation Wizard builds that layer for any U.S. area you draw, at the resolution you choose, and it's free.

WHAT IT DOES

• Pick an area three ways — click 1° cells on the map, search a state by name, or add a whole region. 52 states and territories, 12 regions including CONUS.
• See the cost before you commit — the readout updates as you click: 12 cells · DTED2 · 297 MB · ~2 min. The package size is exact, not an estimate. Nobody should discover a build is 27 GB forty minutes in.
• Three resolutions — DTED2 at 1 arc-second (~30 m posts, 26 MB per cell), DTED1 at 3 arc-seconds (~90 m, 2.9 MB), DTED0 at 30 arc-seconds (~900 m, 34 KB).
• Bare-earth data — USGS 3DEP, lidar-derived over most of the country. That matters for line-of-sight: SRTM measures the top of the canopy and reports treetops as terrain.
• Push straight to a tablet — plug in over USB and it copies cells to /sdcard/atak/DTED, checking free space first. Or save the zip and copy it yourself.
• Resumable — downloaded source tiles are cached. Build New Jersey then Pennsylvania and only the new ground is fetched.
• Every cell stamped — files carry DISTRICT47 in the DTED header, visible in any DTED viewer.

INSTALL — macOS

• Open the .dmg and drag TAKevation Wizard onto Applications.
• First launch only: right-click the app → Open → Open. A normal double-click will be refused, because the build isn't signed with an Apple Developer certificate. macOS may say the app is damaged. It isn't — that's the message Gatekeeper shows for anything downloaded without a signature.
• After that it opens normally.
• Requires macOS 11 or later on Apple Silicon (M1 and up).

INSTALL — Windows

• Right-click the downloaded .zip → Properties → tick Unblock → OK. Do this before extracting. Windows marks downloaded files, and that mark is what its security features react to.
• Unzip the folder anywhere — Desktop or Program Files both work — then run TAKevationWizard.exe.
• Don't run it from inside the zip. Windows extracts to a temporary folder and deletes it, and the app will appear to start and vanish.
• Requires Windows 10 or 11.

USING IT WITH ATAK

Cells land in the layout ATAK expects — atak/DTED/w075/n39.dt2, longitude folder then latitude file. Copy the DTED folder to Internal storage/atak/ on the device, or let the app push it over USB. Restart ATAK afterwards.

ATAK uses the highest-resolution cell it can find for any given point, so these sit alongside a worldwide DTED0 set without conflict. The sensible pattern is DTED0 everywhere as a floor, DTED2 only where you'll actually run a viewshed.

PUSHING TO A DEVICE

Needs Android Platform Tools (adb). No computer ships with it. The app downloads it from Google on request — 7.7 MB on Windows, 15.4 MB on macOS — and uses an existing install if you already have one, which matters because two versions of adb will fight over the same port. Nothing is bundled. Enable Developer Options and USB Debugging on the tablet first.

Windows also needs a USB driver before adb can see the device: Google's generic driver, or your manufacturer's. Samsung devices generally need Samsung's own.

FIELD NOTES

United States only. The data comes from USGS 3DEP, which covers the 50 states, DC and Puerto Rico. There's no coverage outside that.

DTED2 is large. 26 MB per 1° cell. A state runs a few hundred MB to 4 GB; the whole contiguous U.S. is 1,115 cells and 27 GB. The app tells you the number before you start and suggests DTED1, which is the same ground at 3.0 GB. For anything but line-of-sight work, DTED1 is usually enough.

Ocean cells don't exist. Select a coastal state and some cells will report no coverage and drop out. That's correct — 3DEP has no tile for open water. New Jersey is 12 cells on the map and 10 in the package.

Flat ground looks flat. If you build a coastal plain and the 3D view doesn't change, the data is right and the terrain isn't. South Jersey spans 66 m of relief across 111 km. Test somewhere with actual hills before concluding something's broken.

Neither build is code-signed. That's the cause of every warning above, including the Smart App Control block. Signing certificates cost money that free tools don't generate. It's on the list; it isn't done yet.

Elevation data is U.S. Geological Survey 3DEP, public domain. USGS is not affiliated with District47 and doesn't endorse this tool.

KEEP THE FREE TOOLS FREE

This app costs nothing and always will. The free tools and data packages here are paid for by people who chip in after using one — if it saved you an evening, there's a donation page. Any amount, no obligation, and it stays free either way.

DISTRICT47 · district47.us