SCCARC March Meeting and Presentation by W6OJE

Many Mathematical models have been proposed to predict the quality of radio links or station coverage maps or coverage radii.  One well-respected model for predicting VHF/UHF/Microwave communications is the ITS-Irregular Terrain Model, or Longley-Rice Model.  

Roger Coud’e (VE2DBE) has developed a software package called Radio Mobile that uses this model in a user friendly way. It connects with on-line Terrain, Land Cover and map databases and allows easy entry of your station parameters (location, radio and antenna specs). It can predict pretty accurately, performance of a link between sites or map your station’s coverage to mobile or hand held users based on statistical success criteria you can set.

I plan to share my screen while I go through the process of entering the required parameters into Radio Mobile and we investigate some point-to-point paths between members’ QTH’s and other members and/or repeaters.  We will also generate coverage maps that take into account available terrain elevation data that is relatively fine-grained (on 30 foot spacing grids).  I hope it will be fun and introduce you to a very useful tool that some may not have known about before.

Jerry, W6OJE