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Setup Tab

Initial Setup

There are few things to configure when first using WXtrack, your favourite satellites and your location.  
  • Selecting satellites.  The program is provided with a set of two-line element files which were current at the time the archive was prepared, but you can use your own files (with .TXT, .TLE or .2LI file extensions), and you can specify where the files live so that they can be shared with other programs which use orbital data.  The program scans for all files in the folder you specify.  To select which satellites are displayed, drag and drop the satellites you want to monitor from the Available list to the Active list. You can select one or more satellites to drag, and you can double-click to add a satellite as well.  You will find these methods useful if your list of available satellites is quite long.
  • Prioritising satellites - you can assign a priority to each satellite from 0 upwards.  If you use priority, 1 is the lowest priority, and 10 the highest.  Zero means skip this satellite.  Simply select a satellite from either the Available or the Active list and set its priority with the two up/down buttons.  Be sure to set the priority for both north-bound and south-bound passes.
  • Checking Prioritise passes prevents non-overlapping passes from being shown in the pass list.  Passes are prioritised first by satellite priority, and then by maximum elevation.
  • You can choose to disable the sending of Doppler correction to some radios, so that a receiver equipped with hardware or software AFC can track the frequency itself.
  • There are four banks available, each with its own active list.  You might want to have space stations on one list and weather satellites on another, for example.  Click on the Active Bank buttons to change the list.  Right-click on the Active Bank dialog to export the list of satellites.
  • You should then set up your location details, by clicking on Cities... and choosing the nearest city, by clicking on the Edit locations... button or by clicking on the bold location name (_default unless you have previously run WXtrack).  Your location is given as decimal degrees of latitude and longitude.  West of Greenwich or south of the equator the figures will be negative.  You can control what elevation the program uses to judge that satellites are above the horizon, between 0 and 25 degrees.  You can rename your location, and add other locations from the Edit location details dialog.  If you have problems with the locations becoming corrupt (this can happen if you have run beta versions and then reverted), there is a Reset (to factory defaults) button.  You can choose what longitudes switch between Greenwich or International Date Line centred mapping.
  • You can read your location from a GPS receiver using the NMEA $GPRMC sentence
  • Each location can have its own radio horizon profile file, so if you have a location called Edinburgh the program would first look for a file called EdinburghHorizon.dat, then for the default file Horizon.dat
  • If you live far away from the zero degree longitude line (the Greenwich meridian), you may prefer that your World Map is centred around the International Date Line instead.  The Greenwich centred in controls allow you to select how far west of how far east you must be for this to happen atuomatically.
  • Clicking on the Make pass list button should then give you a list of passes that day for your chosen satellites at your location.  You can change the date for which the passes are generated by changing the date selector box, and the number of days with the up-down buttons next to the Make Pass List button.  The date and number of days is not saved when the program exits.  The pass list will be saved to the pass list file.
  • You can adjust the Minimum pass duration as you wish to filter out short passes
  • You can adjust the Minimum pass elevation as you wish to filter out passes with a low maximum elevation (registered version only)
  • You can check Auto switch which will make the program automatically switch to tracking the next available satellite.
  • You can choose between All, Daylight or Night-time passes to display all passes, or to display passes only where the sun is, or is not, above the horizon at the mid-pass satellite sub-point.
  • You can check the Predicted only box so that only passes which appear in the passlist will be tracked (registered version)
  • If you want to compare ground image predictions with actual satellite pictures you have, you should enter one or more paths to the satellite picture files.  These must be named in accordance with the WXSat convention, although a variety of suffices and file types (BMP, PNG and JPEG) are allowed and these are described here.
  • If you wish to save the files generated by WXtrack in a different folder than the program itself, you should specify a path for the results files using the folder browser provided.

    Routine interaction

    You would normally make use of the setup tab to determine which satellite you want to have as your primary satellite on the next tabs.  You can select a pass from the list (and as you alter the date the list for the day will appear after a short delay - the delay is to avoid excessive flicker, by the way).  Clicking on Get next pass will advance the date to today, and select the next pass from the list.  Once you have selected a pass, you can click on the Map from pass, Picture from pass, or Fly this pass buttons to go to those tabs, with the satellite and date/time of your choice pre-loaded.  Note that Fly this pass flys the current pass from the starting time, not in real time.  A quick shortcut to the Ground Path tab with the pass details pre-loaded is to double-click on a pass.  Note that all times are in UTC, and the program uses the setting you make in the Windows Control Panel for Time Zone information to convert your computer's clock time to UTC, so please make sure this information is correct!
    To print a diary of the passes for the next few days, an Ephemeris, press the Print ephemeris button.  You will get a dialog box allowing viewing, saving or printing of the ephemeris.  This is a neatly formatted version of the pass list to take away.
    To rename a file according to a particular pass, press Shift while clicking the Map from pass button.  This allows you to rename files that have been recorded overnight.

    Hint: pressing shift while clicking the Make pass list button will make a pass list for yesterday and today.
    Hint: when you click on a pass, the pop-up hint gives more details of the pass

    What qualifies as a pass?

    WXtrack will count as a pass a certain period or greater during which a particular satellite is above the elevation specified.  The elevation includes a correction for atmospheric refraction, which is probably completely inappropriate at radio frequencies, but is highly relevant should you wish to observe the satellite.  You can adjust the minimum pass duration to count as a pass using the spin control just below the list of passes.

    Note

    If you set either a very high minimum elevation (over 5 degrees, for example), or a very long minimum pass duration (over 2 minutes, for example), you may well miss passes or obtain unexpected results.  You have been warned!