Mapping and Propagation

Jeff Millar, wa1hco

Where this comes from

These pictures come from "Radio Mobile", a nice program by VE2DBE available from here .  His site points you to digital terrain elevation data ( DTED files ) needed to generate the plots for your location.

Several on-line services provide maps from lat/long coordinates...which really helps to identify mountains and hills.  Just place the cursor on a terrain elevation feature, read off the lat/long and enter it into the map program.

topozone.com (deg/min/sec) or  topozone.com (deg/min in decimal)
maptech.com

Radio configuration

 
Receiver Sensitivity 0.25 uV
Receiver Antenna Height 2 Meters
Color Fill -50 to -100 dBm

Height Matters

...as well as the band.  Each site has its own antenna height above ground and each band has its own feedline loss and antenna gain.  The model assume a mobile with 2M antenna height and show signal strength at 50% of the time

Click on the small images to get a larger one.
 

220 200 Km
10W, -3dB line, 5 dBi		 220 100 Km
10W, -3dB line, 5 dBi		 1290 100 Km
10W, -6dB line, 6dBi 
WA1HCO
25M Antenna
WB1CMG
55M Antenna
Mt. Uncanoonuc
10M Antenna
Pack Manadnock
10M Antenna

Provider: MV Communications, Inc.