-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All 2005 News for NTIA/ITS HF Propagation Models (WINDOWS version) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 07 Jan 2005 1. Added Method 30 to ICEPAC. Previously, this was only available for VOACAP. It performs a Short/Long Method smoothing for paths 7000-10000km. See the paper written by George Lane under Help/General/Documents. 1a.If you encounter floating point errors, let me know as I was having some problems until I made some final corrections, but my testing is limited as there is no funding to support this work. 2. While doing #1 above, I discovered a problem in VOACAP area calculations. The antenna efficiency would have been incorrect since the 24 July 2003 version. This would have caused outputs such as SNR, SNRxx, REL to have been wrong. This is especially true if you used the SWWHIP.VOA antenna as the receive antenna. 3. I hope to make a change to REC533 approved by the ITU in the next few weeks before I retire. It will make a slight change in how the operational MUF is calculated. 4. My retirement is set for 3 Feb 2005. I will continue to be involved with the software from home. 14 Jan 2005 1. This version should only affect REC533. I added a change requested by the ITU Working Party 3L. And I quote from the request (Document-3/40-E)(27 Oct 2004): Introduction For the F2 region, the inter-decile range of the operational MUF is taken to be 0.85-1.15 of the monthly median value. This procedure was originally adopted as a simple method suitable for multiple calculations. This restriction no longer applies and a more accurate description of the distribution of operational MUF with location, season and time of day can be inserted. Proposal It is proposed the Recommendation ITU-R P.533, Section 3.6 should be amended to replace the single value for the lower decile factor by the values given in Recommendation ITU-R P.1240, Section 7, Table 2. I have replicated Table 2 and that may be found in the file ..\database\p1240.dat. This is the file that is read to fill the array values, so do not change it, unless you find an error. 2. Be aware that the above change only affects the output variable named FOT. This is known as the Operational MUF. The variable named MUF is the Basic MUF and is not affected. If those who proposed the change would like to discuss this with me, they should contact me by email(gh@its.bldrdoc.gov). 3. The current source code for VOACAP & REC533 has been updated and is available from the website. 4. My retirement is set for 3 Feb 2005. I will continue to be involved with the software from home. 19 Jan 2005 1. When I installed the software on my home computer, I encountered a strange error when running the simplest program, NEWS. This displays all of the news files for each version of the software. It is really quite simple, but caused my home PC running XP to fail with a display driver error and cause the computer to shutdown. So I made a small change in the news program and it eliminated the error. Thus, this version does not change any of the propagation models. Sorry if anyone else experienced this problem. The driver that was identified with the problem was IALMRNT5.DLL. 21 July 2005 1. This is a beta version for Rob Debolt to test. 18 Dec 2005 1. Fixed a problem with the world plotting program (Worldwin) where so plots of the whole world (Lat/Lon) with grid sizes of 100x100 or 70x70 would not shade properly. The problem occured because with floating point rounding, sometimes the eastmost coordinate (which should be +180), would be +180.00001, which becomes -179.99999. Which then becomes the westmost side of the plot!!! 2. Earlier this year, it became known that a software package that uses VOACAP had problems in foreign countries. That was because HamCAP version 1.3 was creating an input file to VOACAP that was formatted improperly. That was because some foreign countries use "," instead of "." in numerical representation. The creator of HamCAP fixed that problem in HamCAP version 1.4. 3. I have changed to use Notepad.exe to display all results from the Point-to-Point models. Previously, I used my own display program but that had lots of limitations. Let me know if this does not work for some versions of Windows. This will also affect the News display program and HFAnt. 4. ICEPAC & VOACAP using METHOD=23 now allows the propagation method to be [20,21,22,30]. Previously, it was always set to 20. 5. Since I retired from the federal government in Feb 2005, I no longer have the ability to control the website: elbert.its.bldrdoc.gov/hf.html This has caused times when the software was not available. Additionally, the webserver is quite old and may vanish. I believe ITS will continue to supply the software and if the above website is not available, it may be found at: www.its.bldrdoc.gov/elbert/hf.html Jari Perkiomaki of Finland maintains the website: www.voacap.com I will supply Jari with the most current versions of the software. I have purchased my own website and the software is available at: www.greg-hand.com/hf.html This will be the official location of the HF software. 6. I have changed all of my contact information in the software to reflect my new email address: gregory.hand@gmail.com Since retirement, I no longer have access to gh@its.bldrdoc.gov. The website and email changes are found on any Help/About menu. 19 Dec 2005 1. There was a problem with the METHOD=23 fix done in the previous version. The TOPLINES did not work. This should fix that.