162 MHz Marine Tracking - How to use as indicator
Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 9:35 pm
Hi All,
Here is a description of how you can all use the 162 MHz Marine Tracking stations around Australia to help you with current propagation conditions.
1. First of all, navagate to http://www.marinetraffic.com
2. Click on 'Live Map', zoom in till you have Australia and New Zealand on screen for starters. Like this : You can see the square green boxes on screen. These boxes are areas where ship signals have been received from in the past hour. The number in the top left corner of each green box indicates the number of ships located in the area of the green box.
The full map view like this is a handy guide to current paths around Australia. If there is a potential path to New Zealand, you will find that the green squares will extend from Australia to New Zealand or close to it. You will soon get the idea of when conditions are up. Under poor or normal conditions you will only find the green squares skirting the coastlines of each country. When conditions pick up, you will find the squares will start extending away from the coastlines as the RX stations begin spotting ships further away.
Look for other areas of propagation like Adelaide or Mt Gambier/Melbourne across to Albany. You can see on the map attached there is a lot of space with no green squares across the Bight path, when conditions are good the squares will bridge right across.
Similarly for Perth paths north to Indonesia or VK4 paths to New Calediona or New Zealand and beyond.
3. To concentrate on a particular path, we can get further informaion by clicking on a Green Square of interest to you. This then opens the map up like this - Also note on the above map, I have clicked the box over the left to make visible the RX stations, you can see the little antennas on the map. So on this map you can see all the stations and vessels being heard in this particular location and zoom position.
4. You will get used to what stations are where, but in this following image, I have clicked on the antenna for Station 183, which happens to be VK7JH - This shows a brief summary of that stations info and data, most importantly showing "Reception Distance in Nautical Miles" in this case 358.7 nM. Which is quite good and conditions are up.
BREAK - I will post this now so I dont lose it all, will be further posts to follow.
Here is a description of how you can all use the 162 MHz Marine Tracking stations around Australia to help you with current propagation conditions.
1. First of all, navagate to http://www.marinetraffic.com
2. Click on 'Live Map', zoom in till you have Australia and New Zealand on screen for starters. Like this : You can see the square green boxes on screen. These boxes are areas where ship signals have been received from in the past hour. The number in the top left corner of each green box indicates the number of ships located in the area of the green box.
The full map view like this is a handy guide to current paths around Australia. If there is a potential path to New Zealand, you will find that the green squares will extend from Australia to New Zealand or close to it. You will soon get the idea of when conditions are up. Under poor or normal conditions you will only find the green squares skirting the coastlines of each country. When conditions pick up, you will find the squares will start extending away from the coastlines as the RX stations begin spotting ships further away.
Look for other areas of propagation like Adelaide or Mt Gambier/Melbourne across to Albany. You can see on the map attached there is a lot of space with no green squares across the Bight path, when conditions are good the squares will bridge right across.
Similarly for Perth paths north to Indonesia or VK4 paths to New Calediona or New Zealand and beyond.
3. To concentrate on a particular path, we can get further informaion by clicking on a Green Square of interest to you. This then opens the map up like this - Also note on the above map, I have clicked the box over the left to make visible the RX stations, you can see the little antennas on the map. So on this map you can see all the stations and vessels being heard in this particular location and zoom position.
4. You will get used to what stations are where, but in this following image, I have clicked on the antenna for Station 183, which happens to be VK7JH - This shows a brief summary of that stations info and data, most importantly showing "Reception Distance in Nautical Miles" in this case 358.7 nM. Which is quite good and conditions are up.
BREAK - I will post this now so I dont lose it all, will be further posts to follow.