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Old September 24th 08, 09:47 PM posted to rec.radio.amateur.antenna
Wayne Wayne is offline
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First recorded activity by RadioBanter: Jul 2006
Posts: 409
Default Calculating the propagation loss with google maps


"Jeff Liebermann" wrote in message
news
On Wed, 24 Sep 2008 07:04:46 -0700 (PDT), covermap
wrote:

Hi, it is my webpage:
http://www.covermap.es

Covermap is an application that allows the calculation of propagation
loss of a particular antenna defined by the user.
In covermap you have the ability to see the extension of the radio
antenna (coverage mode), the different coverage cells of positioned
antennas (cellular mode) and get the loss in decibels on a particular
point with respect to the antenna (point to point mode).


Nice, but are you using a flat earth model? I plugged in my local zip
code (95060) location, leaving the rest of the values at your
defaults, and ended up with a rather crude coverage map of what I
would get if there were no mountains in the way. I reduced the
antenna height to your minimum of 1.5m, and got something a little
better, but still looking like a very flat earth.

I was hoping to be able to produce something like this:
http://802.11junk.com/cellular/jeffl/SVLY-PGE/
as generated by Radio-Mobile software.

Also, if you switch back and forth between "cellular mode" and
"coverage mode", you lose the coverage data from the previous
calculations.

When done, the coverage map is covered up with a balloon with the
aerial number and lat long. Nice but there's no way to get rid of it
without also restarting the program with a new aerial. Also, the term
"new aerial" should really be "new location". The aerials apparently
increment for each new plot, but there's no obvious way to retreive
previous locations or manipulate the count.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D
http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

-
IIRC a quick flat earth estimate is the square root of 2, times the square
root of the antenna height in feet. That gives an estimate of the coverage
radius in miles.