MOSWIN tower picking

[stlouisx50]

I have noticed if you program MOSWIN towers in based on the county you will be in, many times does not allow you to hear agencies within a lot of areas of that county. So the best way I have found is to click on every nearby county and see if the range rings cover that County as well. However this too is not always accurate.
Is there an easier method than manually seeing if, "example", 5 counties around you have a tower and coverage that overlaps where you are? I have noticed from my home towers show they cover areas that I have been where you get absolutely no reception as well as areas you get reception, but the coverage map does not show you have coverage.

The last thing I have done is searching for the towers data freq in a search, then looking it up and programing it. But this does not work if you are traveling.

 

[nd5y]

The database range circles are meaningless. They don't reflect real life radio coverage. if they did they wouldn't be solid circles.

If there are no user radios on a particular talkgroup on a tower that you can receive then you won't hear the talkgroup and you can't do anything to change that.

 

[stlouisx50]

Yup, I realize that, that's why I'm asking, is there a better way to know the coverage of a site? FM stations used to have maps that had their listining area plus the fringe area which was awesome.

I guess I have to so what I said and scan for the towers data and program in that site?
It just sucks sweeping for Frequencies or searching while driving. You end up missing a lot.

 

[nd5y]

is there a better way to know the coverage of a site?

You can look up the location, site elevation, antenna height, transmit power and ERP on the license for each site.
With that info you can figure the feedline loss and antenna gain.
Then you need to know receiver sensitivity, antenna height, antenna gain and feedline loss.
If you know all of that then you can use Radio Mobile or similar software to make coverage prediction maps.

 

[stlouisx50]

You can look up the location, site elevation, antenna height, transmit power and ERP on the license for each site.
With that info you can figure the feedline loss and antenna gain.
Then you need to know receiver sensitivity, antenna height, antenna gain and feedline loss.
If you know all of that then you can use Radio Mobile or similar software to make coverage prediction maps.

OH man. Good info, lots of work figuring that out. Definitely a base receiver only solution though.
It would be cool to see an app that showed which site would be available. You could do what your talking about and have it give you a few various figures depending on how much info you input.
They have something like that for cell phone tower sites. 😊

 

[nd5y]

Definitely a base receiver only solution though.

No. Radio Mobile can calculate signal strength received by a mobile station along radial lines extending from a central transmit location. Something like up to 2000 points on each radial and the radials can be every 0.5 degreees or less.
Or the opposite, mobile tx and base rx.

It's not something you can easily do in real time while driving.