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Text File | 1990-10-16 | 17.9 KB | 344 lines

TMUF TMUF was originally written in response to a request from VS6DX for a IBM PC program that would replace the commercial APPLE program he had been using for predicting HF propagation. There seemed to be a noticeable lack of Ham Radio Programs for the IBM PC, and no graphical MUF plotting program could be located. Hence this program was written. Version 1.00 of TMUF has been finished and in use since February 1986. Due to requests of many hams who have seen it in operation, I am Placing it in Public Domain, and encouraging its FREE distribution. TMUF may be shared with other people under one condition; that there is NO CHARGE for the copy(s). There is obviously much room for improvement of the Program, and I have since developed better ways of doing many of the functions in TMUF. However, as the program fills my needs at the moment, I have little incentive to rewrite it. TMUF is a User Supported program. I am asking for a donation of $20.00 for its use. If there is enough interest and support shown, I will be updating and improving it. Otherwise, it does what I need and will remain as is. Donations should be sent to: James W. Harrison W4HSR 1904 Duke Drive Richardson, Texas 75081 DESCRIPTION This is TMUF, version 1.00, placed in the Public Domain by the Author, W4HSR. It is a Turbo Pascal version of MINIMUF 3.5 as Described in the December 1982 QST article. In addition to calculating and displaying the Maximum Usable Frequency (MUF) and the Optimum Working Frequency (FOT), it permits you to easily choose and change the Date and Flux value for the Calculation, to select the Transmit and receive Stations from a database which you can control and customize, and to plot the calculated values graphically if you have a color graphics adapter. You may add stations to the supplied database using the program, or you may use any ASCII Text Editor to add to, modify, or rearrange the data base. TMUF was written in Turbo Pascal for an IBM PC or close compatible with 256 K or more of RAM. If equipped with a Color Graphics adapter, you will be able to display the calculated values on an X-Y graph very similar to those published monthly in QST. If you have only the monochrome adapter don't despair, you will instead receive a Table of values when requesting a graph. The Program is able to determine if you have graphics compatible hardware. Credit is hereby given to to the following persons who have provided previous programs, source code, and the testing upon which TMUF has been built. Robert B. Rose, K6GKU for the original MINIMUF program in BASIC published in QST magazine, December 1982. Dennis Allen, WA5LXS who converted the original MINIMUF to IBM BASIC and included the conversion algorithm for Flux to Sunspot Number. J. Scott Douglass, K2SD for his BEAMHEAD.BAS which formed the basis of the Data File included with TMUF. Ed Nance, VS6DX and the Ham community in Hong Kong which tested the preliminary version of TMUF and offered constructive comments. Ed Bachmann for his EBMENU.PAS which was used to implement the Menus for TMUF. Donald R. Ramsey and Larry Romero for their TURBO-UT.PAS which was used as the basis of the formatted inputs. If desired, the program may be initiated with up to two optional parameters on the command line to automatically set desired selections. This will bypass the introductory screen and result in an automatic calculation/plot. The first parameter is normally solar flux value and the second is the desired receive Station Call Letters or Prefix. Either or both of these parameters may be specified by typing them on the command line immediately after the program name separated by a space. If no parameters are specified, the program will default to a solar Flux of 80 and with the Receive Station set to the second record in the Data base. If you wish to specify the receive station without specifying a flux value you may do so. The Transmit Station will always be set to the first entry in the Data Base. If either of the two parameters are specified, the program will automatically go into the Plot mode upon entry, and will shortly after display the graph of the specified data. If at any time you specify or select a station which is not in the data base, you will be so informed, and may make another selection. For anyone who may not know how to obtain the value of the Solar Flux, it is broadcast by the National Bureau of Standards radio station WWV at 18 minutes after each hour. WWV broadcasts in the high frequency bands may be received on 2.5, 5.0, 10.0, 15.0 and 20.0 mHz. The program features a Lotus style menu for all selections. You may make your selections by typing the first letter of the desired selection, or by moving with the cursor keys or space bar to the desired selections and pressing Return. The Menu selections are: Plot Plots the MUF/FOT of the current settings if you have a color graphics adapter. If not a table will be displayed as described below. Table Displays a table of the MUF/FOT of the current settings. All information available on the Plot is also displayed in the table. For some applications the table may be preferable, and the table does not require the color graphics adapter. Add_a_Station Permits adding new Stations to the Data base. Stations added in this manner are appended to the end of the data base file. You will be asked for the Call or Prefix of the station, the city, state or country, and the latitude and longitude. Refer to the description of the data file for more information. Date Permits changing the Date of the Calculation. The default date is the DOS date as read by the program upon entry. You may change the date to any valid date. TMUF will not accept invalid dates. The year portion is used only in checking validity of Leap years and has no bearing on the actual MUF calculations! The primary use of the date is to calculate the solar zenith angle at the mid-point of the path. This has a very important effect on the MUF as you will find if you experiment with various dates. You will find a marked difference in the behavior of the path during the winter and summer periods. Flux Permits changing the value of the solar flux. Solar Flux may range between 65 and 245. This is converted to Smoothed International Sunspot Number in the TMUF program. Flux is used instead of sunspot number as the input unit due to the readily available flux data from WWV. Select Allows you to Select a new station from the data base as either the Transmit or the Receive Station. You will first be asked for the Station Call or Prefix. You may type over the data in the field, or you may clear the field by pressing the <ESC> key. Your entry need not be complete. If you can't remember the complete call or prefix, enter as much of the leading part as you are sure of. The select function is not case sensitive, so you don't have to worry about whether you are in upper or lower case mode. Partial matches are allowed, but remember that the program will select the FIRST entry which matches your input. After entering a value in the Call field, press return and you will be asked to enter either a R to designate the Selected call as the Receive station, or a T to designate it as the Transmit station. End Ends the Program and returns you to DOS The Data Base itself is a simple sequential file with fields delimited by commas in the manner of a BASIC program DATA statement. In Fact this file was generated from BASIC DATA statements included in the Public Domain Beam Heading Calculation Program BEAMHEAD.BAS. The fields are as follows: Field 1: Call Sign or Prefix - Free form Upper Case 20 characters Maximum. Field 2: City - Free form Upper Case 20 characters Maximum. Field 3: State or Country - Free Form Upper Case 20 characters Maximum. Field 4: Latitude - Numbers and sign only, entered as a decimal number, North Latitude is positive, South Latitude is negative, nine characters Maximum, Absolute Value must not exceed 90, Plus Sign not Required. Field 5: Longitude - Numbers and sign only, entered as a decimal number, West Longitude is positive, East Longitude is negative, nine characters Maximum, Absolute Value must not exceed 180, Plus Sign not Required. Being a sequential text file, the Data Base may be Edited with almost any ASCII Text Editor. The order of entry of the majority of the file as furnished here is alphabetical. This is quite arbitrary and may be changed by you if you desire. Only two of the entries are important as to their order, and these are the first and second. The program will always use the first entry in the Data File for the default transmit station. Hence, you should place your own station as the first entry in the Data File. Also the program will use the second entry in the Data File as the default receive station unless it receives contrary instructions via the command line. Therefore the second entry in the Data File should be selected as the station of your primary interest. Other entries may be in any order, but as the search for a call is sequential, you might want to move the stations you frequently plot to the first part of the file, immediately after the second entry (Receive station). This will speed up the selection process. Duplicate Entries are allowed, and you will find many in the supplied data base, but due to the Sequential search method, only the First occurrence can be selected. Also, since partial matches are allowed in the selection portion of the program, the first entry matching the partial entry will be selected, i.e., if both UA1 and UA9 are in the data file and you select Ua, the first UA entry will be chosen. Note that selection in the program is not case sensitive. The mathematics of the MUF calculation used in this program are as nearly as possible exactly the same as the BASIC program described in the QST article. There's a whole lot of Trigonometric number crunching going on, for each hop, for each hour of the selection, so be patient. Actually it's not too bad, requiring at most about 30 seconds to calculate a new 2 hop path (All paths are treated as either one or two hops). If you wish to compare the results of TMUF with the original MINIMUF, the two stations used in the QST article example are included as TEST1 & TEST2 in the data Base. Be sure and set the Flux to 156 and the date to 17 Oct for the comparison. As supplied, TEST1 and TEST2 are the first and second entries, and will default to the transmit and receive stations. The calculated data including the selected Parameters, Path Distance, Beam Heading from the Transmit Station, and computed number of Hops are displayed in either Graphical or Tabular format by choosing PLOT or TABLE from the Menu. If no changes have been made to Station, Date, or Flux since the last calculation, the Display is almost Instantaneous, as the data does not have to be recalculated. If you wish to print the Graphical Output of TMUF, you should issue the DOS command GRAPHICS before running the Program, and then use the Print Screen Function (depress the SHIFT and PrtSc keys simultaneously) to produce the printout. Note that the call to GRAPHICS is is included in the MUF.BAT file. The TMUF program includes the following Files: TMUF.COM This is the Actual Program. TMUF.DAT This is the Data Base of Calls and locations. TMUF.DOC This File which you are presumably reading! 4X6.FON This is a font file required by the Turbo Pascal Graphics routines. If you are not equipped with Graphics Hardware, you do not need this file. 8X8.FON This is also a font file required by the Program. Likewise if you do not have Graphics hardware, you will not need this File. ERROR.MSG This is the Pascal Error Message File. MUF.BAT This is a batch file used to start TMUF. It includes the call to GRAPHICS.COM and handles the command line variables for TMUF.COM. AUTOEXEC.BAT Optional, included in case you wish to boot and run the program from diskette. You will need to add this file to a system formatted diskette along with the TMUF.COM and TMUF.DAT files. You should also add the DOS files GRAPHICS.COM and MODE.COM and If you have a clock/ calendar board, you should copy your file for setting the DOS date/time onto the diskette and replace the DATE and TIME statements with the proper command for Setting the DOS clock from your Clock board. This Batch file ends by calling the MUF.BAT file described above. The TMUF Program supports Pathing. In order to make sure that TMUF can find the necessary files, you should install the files in a subdirectory supported by your SET PATH command. Provided you do this, TMUF should be able to find its files regardless of what directory you are in when you call it. The files TMUF.COM, TMUF.DAT, 4X6.FON, 8X8.FON, and ERROR.MSG must all be located in a directory or subdirectory which is listed in the PATH environment in order for the program to be able to locate the necessary files. If you fail to do this, you will receive an error message to the effect that the program can not locate the required file. If unable to locate the data base file, TMUF will default the transmit and receive stations to TEST1 and TEST2. 73 s Jim Harrison, W4HSR