[VHFcontesting] SPLAT!

[Marshall Williams]

Hello to all....I have run a SPLAT! plot for my station, assuming 
144.2Mhz and an antenna height of 440ft.....I clearly don't understand 
what this plot is telling me.  The circular pattern that I get is only 
about 50miles in radius.  This does not make any sense to me at all.  We 
regularly work our rovers out to 400miles on 2M, 222, and 432.  Those 
contacts are clearly not "rag chew" quality, but they certainly are good 
enough for calls, grid, and a Roger.  The program does not ask what your 
power is or what your anetnna gain is.  It would seem that these are 
pretty important as far as distance is concerned.  Again, I am clearly 
lost here.....

More information on what I am seeing would be appreciated.  Thanks to 
all.....73's Marshall K5QE

k4gun at comcast.net wrote:

>Greeat stuff man.  I'll be spending a lot of time on this one!  Thanks.
>
>Steve
>
>-------------- Original message -------------- 
>From: James Duffey <JamesDuffey at comcast.net> 
>
>  
>
>>The ARRL internet surfer, WA1LOU, has just posted on the ARRL page an 
>>interesting summary of a web page called SPLAT!: 
>>
>>< http://cs.ecok.edu/~bw/SPLAT/ > 
>>
>>SPLAT! calculates path loss for frequencies from 20 MHz to 20 GHz. You 
>>input your location, antenna height, and frequency. It will calculate 
>>a coverage pattern for you using the Longley-Rice Irregular terrain 
>>model. It will calculate the path loss between two stations and 
>>display the path loss as a function of distance between two stations. 
>>
>>You need to input your lat and lon and it adds it to a database of 
>>other stations. You can calculate the path loss between any two 
>>stations that are on the list. 
>>
>>This is a web hosted version of the LINUX program SPLAT!, with which I 
>>was not familiar. 
>>
>>I entered a couple of my favorite rover sites and the results seem to 
>>qualitatively agree with what I have experienced. The path loss 
>>calculation lets you see what you need to do to work those stations 
>>that never seem to come back to you. It also lets you evaluate 
>>potential rover sites against working the usual contest suspects. 
>>
>>Using this you can calculate the effects of antenna height and sloping 
>>ground. 
>>
>>The are a couple of things one needs to look out for, I noticed that 
>>it calculates the path loss assuming vertical polarization and it 
>>defaults to the temperate climate model. Assuming vertical 
>>polarization probably is a few dB down on horizontal polarization for 
>>troposcatter and in some locals a better climate model should be used. 
>>The desert option would be nice here in NM. The Linux version allows 
>>one to change these things, but you also need to download a whole lot 
>>of terrain data that the web page author has already done. 
>>
>>Try it out, it is a great tool for planning roves. - Duffey 
>>-- 
>>KK6MC 
>>James Duffey 
>>Cedar Crest NM 
>>
>>
>>
>>    
>>
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