Mapping transmitters?

[Pro-95]

Does anyone have a cool/slick/easy way to map out transmitter towers?

Basically we have a statewide EDACS system and I'd like to program most of it for a customer who travels Nevada alot. So if I program a bank with geographically seperate transmitter sites then another bank with those close to the ones in the other bank, I should be able to cover the State in a couple of banks as the neighboring control channels will be in different banks yet allow you to travel the state by dropping/picking up different control channels.

So does anyone know a way? No I won't be purchasing a GIS system in the near future. I will play with AutoCAD but from my photogrammetry days and AutoCAD I remeber an awful lot of asprin.

 

[Pro-95]

Ok so I'm using my GPS software package. It works but with 81 sites this will take some time, plus some LCN freq's are 2 sets per a tower.

Why on earth would you do that from a system design aspect? Repeating?

 

[hai_akeeba]

I am not sure if this will be of any help; but look at this site.

http://www.berkana.com/tower.php3

 

[BANDIT]

The FCC database gives the Latitude and Longitude for each licence site and I think a portion of a map showing where it is located. If not use something like MS Streets and Trips, it has lat and log locator and you could pin point each site.

 

[scanfan03]

Is there any freeware that you can enter the lat./long. and it will give you a set of streets for the Houston, Texas area. I would use it for lifeflight.

 

[loumaag]

...a statewide EDACS system

Umm, am I the only one who saw this part? How do you plan to address LCN assignments? I mean if two "geographically seperate" sites use LCN 02, which one gets to be in Slot 2 of the bank? :?

 

[Pro-95]

I'm hearing you Lou. Obviously I assumed there would be some sort of logic in planning a statewide system but the more I know about "our" system the more I realize that there seems to be noway to program anything less than several hundred banks with some sort of GPS intelligence built in to turn on/off banks as you travel statewide. I'm trying to understand this a bit more with a post in the systems section. If what I'm understanding to be true then it seems to me the best wide are design would be groups of freqs in the same LCN be set aside as a site then overlay the area with "cells" of adjoining sites with different frequencies. But since that appears to not be the case in my statewide system, I have no idea how to get around this. Still I will map out the towers just because it's a fun little project.

 

[loumaag]

Michael, fun projects are what the hobby is about. :lol:

A couple of things, looking through the data here on the DB I notice that someone put a couple of "junk" licenses in the DB for sites. I am going to clean those out in a few minutes. The FCC database, once you actually get to the license for a site, will map that site for you. So will the DB here, once the license is in place for a site (See Sloan (West)). The FCC mapping will allow you to see counties and you can set zooms as you want so you can get an overall view. I have used my GPS software mapping program to set the sites as waypoints (no one says waypoints have to be on a "way" ) and then you can produce a map with it.

 

[WayneH]

I'm not sure if I read this correctly but I do a lot of site mapping by stripping the needed data (especially GPS coords), putting it into an Excel file, and then importing it into either Microsoft's Map Point or Streets and Trips.

I'd recommend here for getting the data as with the FCC database you have to navigate way too many pages. Too bad Lindsay doesn't give you the option of checking or unchecking what data you want. Would make the copy and pasting much easier when it's all there on one page. You reading this Lindsay?!

-Wayne

 

[UPMan]

You can also use the Tiger Map system on the Census web site to put stick pins onto a map. Here is one I did for the Mesa, AZ area (takes a minute or so to generate the map, so be patient). You have to put the lat/lon of the stick pins in a file accessible from the web. This is scaled pretty large, so that I could print it at 36" x 36" on the plotter. I got the tower lat/lon info from the FCC database.

http://tiger.census.gov/cgi-bin/map...=1.000&ht=1.000&iwd=2110&iht=1795

 

[dave911]

You can also use the Tiger Map system on the Census web site to put stick pins onto a map. Here is one I did for the Mesa, AZ area

That looks great. How did you get the map so large? I've worked with it and can only get the small 422x359px square.

 

[UPMan]

I manually changed the "iht" and "iwd" settings in the address line:

&iwd=2110&iht=1795

 

[dave911]

Thank you!

 

[nd5y]

There is a cool radio coverage mapping program called Radio Mobile
http://www.cplus.org/rmw/english1.html


Tom ND5Y

 

[crayon]

There is a cool radio coverage mapping program called Radio Mobile.

It is really cool to play around this this type of software!! Dont forget about SPLAT! for linux:

http://www.qsl.net/kd2bd/splat.html

Is there any other free RF modeling software out there to be had?