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World of Ham Radio 1997
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1997-02-01
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Beam v2.1
Introduction:
BEAM was written to help amateur radio operators to point
their directional antennas when trying to contact distant sta-
tions. Although it might possibly be of use to other people, I
have written it with the "Ham" in mind. This is not the finished
product, but is instead a major milestone on the way to develop-
ing an integrated DX assistant program. Stay tuned!
Origins:
BEAM originated as an MBasic program written by Paul Mayer
(WB9ZHG), Dick Genaille (W4UW), and Dr. Art Epstein (WB2WMJ). I
am indebted to them for providing the idea and also the basic
algorithm for calculation. This algorithm can be found in the
ARRL Antenna Book, if you are interested. As useful as their
original program was, it suffered from being written in an
interpreted language. What I did was to rewrite the program in
Quick Basic, so that it could be run as a "stand-alone" program
by anyone with a DOS machine. This was "BEAM v1.0". Before too
long, I realized that there were some improvements to be made and
finally ended up "gutting" the original program, leaving only the
algorithm and data files, and making an entirely new program,
"BEAM v2.0". In this latest version (v2.1), I have tried to make
the user interface more "forgiving".
How it Works:
To run BEAM, you need three files:
1. BEAM.EXE - the program file
2. US.DAT - the data files for U.S. locations
3. DX.DAT - the data files for DX locations
The fourth file you received (BEAM.DOC) is this document.
After typing "BEAM" and pressing "ENTER", you will first be
asked for your latitude and longitude. If you don't have this
information, you may be able to get it from other hams in your
area, or through the local Boy Scouts, airport, or college.
Topographic maps will have latitude and longitude markings in the
margins. Enter the information in the format shown on the screen,
using commas to separate the different items. From this point on,
there is no way to "screw up" the program (not that I've found,
anyway).
You will be asked if you want a listing for US or DX loca-
tions. If you want both, I'm afraid you'll have to run the
program twice (maybe something to fix in v2.2). Be sure to have
your printer turned "on" and "on-line" with the paper at the top
of the page before you start printing. You'll be asked to confirm
this before BEAM starts to print.
Extra Credit:
If there are locations that you'd like to include in your
printout but were overlooked by me when I made the list, you can
enter them into the data files using any editor or word-proces-
sor. Be sure that your program does not put any "extra" marks or
codes, because the program is expecting a pure ASCII file and
will do strange and unpredictable things if it encounters those
weird word-processor codes. The format of the data files is very
simple. The fields are separated by commas, and all "string" data
is enclosed in double quotes ("). The first field is the amateur
radio call sign(s) for the location/region and the second field
is the name of the area. The third and fourth fields are the
latitude and longitude of the location in decimal degrees, with
south latitude and east longitude being negative numbers. These
numbers may be as precise as you want (up to 15 digits), but
remember that even the narrowest beam antenna has a spread of
tens of degrees. Besides, the algorithm is only good down to
+/- 2 degrees.
Flowers and Rotten Tomatoes:
If you like this program and would like to boost my ego a
bit (and maybe prod me into doing more work on the DX assistant)
or if you think BEAM could use more work (or should be globally
erased), drop me a line. If you have specific suggestions or
anything you'd like to see in future versions, please let me
know. My address is:
Jim Laidler
Apartment 12
2709 84th Ave. Court West
Tacoma, Washington
98466-2770