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Current Feature Articles   Oct 10 Surfin': More Going ATV Digitally   Oct 03 Surfin': Going ATV Digitally   Oct 02 Amateur Radio Quiz: Historically Speaking   Oct 01 ARRL In Action: What Have We Been Up To Lately?   Oct 01 It Seems to Us: Pooling Our Resources   Sep 30 Paradise Found -- the Turks & Caicos -- "When Chicken was Invented"   Sep 29 Another World Championship Medal for ARDF Team USA   Sep 26 Surfin': Playing Safe   Sep 26 The Amateur Radio Crossword Puzzler   Sep 24 Wireless History on East McCarty Street ARRL Products: Instructor Support (More) Basic Electronics Course and Kit -- New Price $55.00, effective April 21, 2008 -- The Basic Electronics Course and Kit is intended for those teachers and instructors that want a ready resource that they can adapt to their instruction of electronic fundamentals. The materials include a PowerPoint presentation and instructor's script. The course is designed around affordable components, prototyping board, and VOM and uses Understanding Basic Electronics as the associated reference (sold separately). The ARRL Instructor's Manual for Technician and General License Courses -- Now Shipping! -- NOW designed for both Technician and General Class. Includes CD-ROM. US Amateur Radio Bands - ARRL Frequency Chart (50 pk) -- Now Shipping! -- 50 pack. Full color, size 8.5 x 11 inches. Understanding Signals -- Now Shipping! -- This Stamps in Class guide shows you how to generate, view and measure a variety of wave forms with the Parallax USB Oscilloscope and BASIC Stamp-controlled circuits. Ham Radio...Planning for the Future 2000 -- Proceedings of The ARRL National Educational Workshop. September 2000.

This week, visit a Web site that determines how well your signal gets from here to there.

The W5GFE Splat Page plots RF coverage maps and data for any radio station in North America.

Back in July 2005, Surfin' featured SPLAT!, an excellent Linux application from John Magliacane, KD2BD, that analyzes RF signal propagation, loss and terrain for the radio spectrum between 20 MHz-20 GHz. Using terrain data available from the US Geological Survey (USGS), SPLAT! analyzes point-to-point radio paths, as a well as coverage areas of repeaters and broadcast facilities. It generates coverage maps, charts and text reports that provide information on the location of obstructions due to terrain, as well as path-loss based on the Longley-Rice propagation model.

The coverage maps that SPLAT! creates are excellent. The program uses USGS's Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data to generate its maps and the results are very accurate, but to achieve those accurate results requires a large amount of data. Also, SPLAT! runs on Linux, which is not everyone's operating system of choice

To work around these features, Bill Walker, W5GFE, downloaded all the USGS files to what he calls "a rather hefty server" and added a Web interface that permits anyone to use SPLAT! via the Internet at the W5GFE Splat Page, thus relieving the user from running Linux and downloading large files

I gave W5GFE's SPLAT! online interface a workout and it performed flawlessly and quickly (about one minute to generate each plot), which is a feat considering the amount of data that the program must manipulate. Plot early to avoid the rush.

Until next time, keep on surfin'!

Editor's note: As a former amateur cartographer, Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, loves maps and map-related applications. To communicate with Stan, send him e-mail or add comments to his blog. By the way, every installment of Surfin' is indexed here, so go look it up.