Station Info Usage
The main Station Info window, pictured below, is used to specify
the selection criteria for a set of stations. Once a set of stations
has been found, the stations can be sorted and filtered, and more
details about each station can be displayed separately.
Station Info Main Window
Search Criteria
- Location: specifies the point about which the
search radius is centered. The location must, unfortunately, be
entered in terms of latitude and longitude in decimal degrees. I'll
provide more flexibility in this specification in subsequent
versions.
- Distance: specifies the range of distances in which
stations will be included in the search results. Normally, this will
be a single number, optionally followed by a units specification, such
as "km", "mi", or "nm". A range of distances can also be specified by
entering two distance values. This will limit the search to those
stations between these two distances.
- Freq/Chan: specifies the range of frequencies or
channels to be included in the search. This selection is based on the
the usual convention for designating stations in a particular band:
frequency in KHz for AM stations, frequency in MHz for FM stations,
and channel number for TV stations.
- Band: selects the bands that are to be included in
the search. The AM, FM, and TV bands can each be individually
included or excluded.
- Options: selects the types of records that are
included in a search. New stations are those which have not yet been
assigned a call sign. Old stations are, uhm, I forget exactly, but
they're old. Ancillary stations include translators, transponders,
and other ancillary transmitters.
- Display: selects the number of stations on each
channel to display. The stations can be limited to the few most
powerful or to the few nearest stations on each channel.
- Search: is pressed to initiate a search for all
stations meeting the previously specified criteria. At the completion
of a search, the status bar at the bottom of the window will be
updated to reflect the number of stations found within the search
range, and the number of these that are displayed.
Sorting the Results
A set of search results can be sorted by frequency, by power, or by
distance by clicking on the appropriate column heading. The sort
order toggles between ascending and descending on each click of the
column heading. The sorting is done in a stable fashion, so that
clicking on distance and then channel will result in the stations
being sorted by channel and then by distance within a channel.
Interpreting the Results
While most of the information displayed should be reasonably obvious,
there are a few columns that require some explanation.
- Channel: lists the channel or frequency that a
station is assigned. The "traditional" nomenclature for a band is
used, so TV stations are listed by channel, but AM and FM stations are
listed by frequency.
- Service/Status: is an oddball collection of bits of
information that I find useful, but that don't really deserve their
own column. Currently this includes the station's service and status
classifications as per the FCC definitions of these terms, and the
number of towers (for AM stations) or radiation pattern data points
(for FM and TV stations) associated with a broadcast facility.
- Callsign: is the station's callsign.
- Power: is the station's effective radiated power in
kilowatts.
- Distance: is the distance from the specified
location to the station, in whatever units of measure were used when
specifying the range of distances to be accepted.
- Heading: is the heading from the specified location
to the station, in both a compass point and a number of degrees from
North.
- Location: is the state or province and city listed
for the facility.
Additional Details
Clicking on the entry for any of the stations displayed will bring
up an additional window providing two additional types of information:
parameter/value information, and when available, a plot of the antenna
radiation pattern. These are both still fairly minimal: there is
further information that can be displayed when I get around to it.
Station Info Details Window