On Mon, 2003-01-20 at 15:04, Tim Pozar wrote: > On Sun, Jan 19, 2003 at 11:49:01PM -0800, Greg DesBrisay wrote: > > Sure, I do this all the time. > > GPS units work great (as long as you're outdoors and you're not > > surrounded by too many tall buildings). > > Just about any brand works fine. > > Most of my experience has been with Garmin gear, and older Trimble gear. > > > > What exactly are you trying to accomplish? > > > > If all you want to do is determine if your link is unobstructed, then > > eyeballing your link may be the most effective thing, given that your > > potential link is only two miles long. > > > > For longer links, for links with obstructions, or for links that you > > want to document, you can use the lat/lon measurements you get along > > with a topographic map (or topo-map software like Topo-USA from > > Delorme--cheap and good in my experience) to figure out if you've got > > enough clearance over hills, etc.. (It takes a bit more work to account > > for the height of buildings or trees along the path.) > > And it doesn't take into account refraction and curvature of the earth.
That's absolutely right. You have do curvature and Fresnel-zone clearance calculations by hand with simple topo-map software. I have a spreadsheet handy that I use for that. There's nicer propagation analysis software that does all that for you of course. Greg DesBrisay -- general wireless list, a bawug thing <http://www.bawug.org/> [un]subscribe: http://lists.bawug.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless
