-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 Jan 1997 News for NTIA/ITS HF Propagation Models (WINDOWS version) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 Jan 1997 1. Several changes to the Win32 version were made because Windows-95 and Windows-NT systems use file names that have the first character upper case and the rest lower case. This only affects those using the HFWIN32.EXE version. 2. A minor change was made to VOACAP. Occasionally, no valid modes were found and it was linked to a small programming error. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 27 Feb 1997 1. The ability to point the receive antenna at the transmitter location has been added to the Point-to-Point data input. There is now a button "at Tx" that is similar to the "at Rx" button that already existed in the Tx antenna input screen. 2. If you input Required Signal-to-Noise ratio at -10 dB, the calculations would fail because of a data input field problem. That is now corrected, although I am not sure why I ever allowed negative values to be input! 3. Windows-95 users should now be able to see the whole plot on their screens if you use the 32-bit version. On Windows-95, there is an area at the bottom of the screen that is used for the TASK BAR. This would obscure some of the screen plots because on Windows 3.x, I had access to the whole screen. I have shrunk the plots down slightly in the 32-bit version to try to solve this problem. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 Mar 1997 1. Due to a previous misunderstanding, the Help documentation defined the UT time a being centered on the half hour. For example, 1UT, it was stated was centered at 1:30am. That is wrong. All time is centered on the specified hour. Thus, 1UT covers the time from 0:30 to 1:30am and is centered at 1:00am GMT. This affected minor changes in help messages and some of the Help files. 27 Mar 1997 1. HFANT 32-bit for Windows-NT and Windows-95 systems may have a problem OPENing antenna files. This is caused by the fact that these systems return the file name in lower case, whereas the 16-bit version always returned UPPER case. I had fixed Point-to-Point and Area Coverage, but I forgot to fix HFANT to correct this. This should now be fixed. It was only a problem with the 32-bit version. 2. On REC533, if your circuit is >9000 km, no MODE or ANGL are calculated because this is the LONG PATH algorithm. This would cause problems if your selected the GRAPH option and tried to plot ANGL. The Minimum and Maximum values would both be 0, and this caused some auto scaling problem. This has been fixed in both the 16 & 32-bit versions. 3. The HELP file for the SI_ICEPAC and SI_VOACAP now contains a description on the S/I algorithm that is used. It is in a paper titled: Predicting Signal-to-Interference Probability in the High Frequency Band It was written to be presented in July 1997 in the UK, but there probably (99.9%) is no travel funds to present it. 4. There were some problems with ICEPAC & VOACAP if Tx & Rx were the same point. I have internally adjusted Rx if it is too close to Tx, so it will be about 3km away. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 28 Apr 1997 1. For those who wish to create their own IONCAP style input deck, that can now be processed properly with the Windows versions of ICEPAC and VOACAP. Perform the following: a. Create the input deck on a file (NOT named modelX.DAT) (That means NOT ICEPACX.DAT or VOACAPX.DAT) The file should be in the ..\RUN directory. b. Create an icon to execute with the following properties: Command line: ..\BIN_WIN\modelW.EXE directory BATCH deckname Where: model = ICEPAC or VOACAP directory = install directory (e.g. C:\ITSHFBC) deckname = file name used in (a) above. Working Directory: directory\RUN (remember, directory is defined above) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11 Nov 1997 1. A problem was discovered in the REC533 Area Coverage program. Directional antennas always pointed North. This has been corrected. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 16 Dec 1997 1. The software may not have worked on some Windows-NT systems. The problem was traced to the \WINDOWS\SYSTEM\SALFLIBC.DLL that is supplied with the software. A new version was obtained from the Fortran compiler developer (Salford) and seems to have solved the problem. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------- End of 1997 --------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------