Club Meeting March 17, 2023

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