MDMONITOR and I have been having a conversation recently about ARTCC info and updates. I mentioned the FAA's AFF.TXT file which includes all ARTCC sites and freqs used at each. I asked him if he thought there might be interest here in a project that I've been doing for myself to calculate the distance from a fixed latitude/longitude locally to the RCAG transmit/receive site. For the local DC folks here, I chose the Washington Monument. I think calculating distance from the RCAG lat/long at least would give a heads-up to know if it's impossibly too far to hear a given RCAG freq so don't waste the memory space in the radio....MAYBE possible and therefore worth programming into the radio....or actually very likely to receive a freq that had been thought to be too far away. The FAA releases AFF.TXT on a 56-day interval, and the data I've used here is from the release for December 1, 2022.
The file is a tab-delimited text file so RR will accept it. Clicking on it should open it in Excel or another spreadsheet. If not, open Excel...click on the DATA tab on the top row then under "GET EXTERNAL DATA" click on FROM TEXT. The import process will open and should recognize the tab delimiting; if not, select tab delimiter and you should be ready to go.
I've included every RCAG for ZDC, ZOB, ZNY, ZBW, ZID, and ZTL that should include every freq within range of the local DC listeners as well as out-of-town folks like JETCRAFTER, RALEIGHGUY, WBAGLEY, etc.
I'd be interested in hearing if folks here think there is or is not any value in doing this. It takes a couple of hours using a word processor and a spreadsheet to manipulate the four different types of records that the FAA includes in the original file and massage them into what I hope is useful.
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