"Range" in the DB

How is it determined what the "ranges" are for each individual system or site?

Does that information originate from somewhere else before its entered into the DB?

6.6. GEOGRAPHIC TAGGING on Page 25
https://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Database_Administrator_Handbook

Jake68111 said:

How is it determined what the "ranges" are for each individual system or site?

Does that information originate from somewhere else before its entered into the DB?

Click to expand...

Simple version, range is the area that the system should cover, a city,county, state, etc.


It has NOTHING to do with the actual reception or what the system may actually cover.

In many cases, it's a "swag"...sometimes, location data is left at "default" values ("county"). Some is lack of information when the submissions are made.

It's all "rough estimations" and typically defined as circles. These days, every tower/transmitter is not omni-directional and some (imperfect) circles should even be pie shaped. However, given these are only "rough estimates", that level of detail probably doesn't matter all that much.

Some of these circles are extremely tiny (departments/categories of talkgroups that cover a small town - as small as 1/2 mile). Others are extremely large circles - some state coverages (particularly for conventional channels) are defined such as to extend into several states away. This is mostly due to the shapes of the areas (really wide or really tall areas).

Good stuff. I just wanted to make sure that the circles AREN'T the "defacto" when it comes to suggesting whether or not I might have reception on any given system or that it is truly the distance that is covered by the transmitter.

Thanks for the responses.

Jake68111 said:

Good stuff. I just wanted to make sure that the circles AREN'T the "defacto" when it comes to suggesting whether or not I might have reception on any given system or that it is truly the distance that is covered by the transmitter.

Thanks for the responses.

Click to expand...

Absolutely not.... purely estimates - sometimes educated, other times, not so much.

And there are so many other factors to consider beyond these location/range values......