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 Previous: ARRL Announces Diamond Club Donor Recognition Program |  Next: Write for the ARRLWeb and Find 15 Days of Virtual Fame |
By By Stan Horzepa,
WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
October 5, 2002
This week, we ride a wave to a Web site dedicated to software that studies radio waves above 50 MHz.
Do you dream about being the first ham to span the Atlantic on 144 MHz? Do you have a halo mounted to the bumper of your car? Do you sprint to the ham shack when the video on the television set starts rolling? If you answer yes to most, if not all of these questions, then you are likely a VHF guy or gal.
 Learn all about new VHF propagation software at the df5ai.net Web site. |
I am a VHF guy and recently, I discovered a new VHF propagation software application on the Internet that I had to check out. The name of the software is BeamFinder and its home is the df5ai.net Web site which makes sense since BeamFinder's author is Volker Grassmann, DF5AI.
Volker studied physics at the University of Göttingen, Germany. In 1983, he joined the Max Planck Institute for Aeronomie (MPAE), where he worked with the multinational EISCAT (European Incoherent Scatter Association) research group focusing on thermospheric winds in the upper atmosphere, gravity waves, aurora borealis, sporadic-E, and the incoherent backscattering of radio waves in the ionosphere. He definitely has the credentials to write a solid application for analyzing VHF propagation and that he did, as evidenced by BeamFinder.
DF5AI's Web site supports and augments his software with links and articles that deal with various aspects of VHF propagation and propagation studies "powered by BeamFinder." The site is also a repository for news and tips related to his software and is the only place on the Internet where you can download BeamFinder.
The minimum requirements of BeamFinder are an Apple Macintosh Power PC (PPC) running MAC OS 8.x or 9.x (currently, it does not support native Mac OS X), 60 Mbytes RAM, 12 Mbytes of free hard disk space, and a high-resolution monitor providing 32,768 screen colors.
BeamFinder does a lot and the quantity of its capabilities also have quality. The same can be said for its home on the Internet. Even if you do not or cannot use BeamFinder, there is a wealth of interesting information there that is well worth viewing.
Until next time, keep on surfin'
Editor's note:
Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, resides in downtown Wolcott, Connecticut, and is a member
of the QQCC (QST quarter century club),
ie, he has been a QST writer for 25
years. Since getting his ticket in 1969, Stan has sampled nearly every entrée
in the Amateur Radio menu (including a stint as Connecticut Section Manager),
but he keeps coming back to his favorite preoccupations: VHF and packet radio.
As a result, he runs a 2-meter APRS digipeater and weather station (WA1LOU-15)
from his mountaintop location in central Connecticut. Stan has been a long time
advocate of using computers with Amateur Radio and wrote programs to dupe
contests and calculate antenna bearings way back in 1978. Today, he is on the
board of directors of the Tucson Amateur Packet Radio (TAPR) and uses his Mac
to surf the Internet searching for that perfect ham radio web page. To contact
Stan, send e-mail to wa1lou@arrl.net.
| Previous: ARRL Announces Diamond Club Donor Recognition Program | Next: Write for the ARRLWeb and Find 15 Days of Virtual Fame |
