Radio Mobile + Google Earth

check out the coverage map i have at http://vcweb.org under coverage. that was best i could do.

wow vince, that looks pretty good. Is that all basically just how Jerry said to do it?

i wish i knew how it was done. the guy that did it charged me about 1k. i didnt have time to do it myself otherwise i would have.

How accurate DEM maps of USA can you find for free?

How’s 1 Arc Second SRTM data?

Browsing around some of the DXer sites gave me some great links when I was first starting down the propagation estimations path… qsl.net for example, hosts a lot of the sites. You’ll find a wealth of information those amham guys have collected, and put up on their own personal pages…

I have to try how this will work with the free maps. I will do the coverage for one POP for the first person from usa who posts coorinates on the forum, then I will put kmz file so everybody can look into.

hi jerry i have now downloaded goggle earth and i will be going through your steps to setup RM+GE. Please if you can make it more precise and explicit i will be very greatful for that help.
thanks in advance.
regards,
Gerald

Use the RM tutorials.

Once you can create coverage plots and save the results as images, then the steps I provided will make sense.

Jerry,

I’ve taken the ideas you gave and changed them a bit.
And it has given me amazing coverage maps.

I took radio mobile and generated a rainbow colored map, but changed the colors all to white. Then generated per tower coverage maps for each one of my transmitters using one reciever as the generalized mobile unit. I did not merge with anything else. I saved the output to a .png file. Then noted the map bounds from map properties on a piece of note paper.

Next i opened the image in an editing program and used the selection tool to select all the white in the image, and then i removed it, replacing it with transparency. Saved the resulting .png file.

Now i loaded the .png into google earth using the aforementioned bounds and set the transparency slider to halfway. Turned on roads within google maps. And viola! one highly versatile and highly useful coverage information map.

Now i can imput an address,
see the estimated coverage,
draw a route for ground distance checking. (for nlos applications) I can even see trees and forestation density. Basically a lot of things i would have to be “on site” to find out. Which forestation is a huuuuuge variable here in michigan so it helps a ton.

Also i can pinpoint a customers house this way as well. and see any trees around their house.

-Wayne

Thanks a ton btw, you made my job and my staff’s job much much easier.

Slick idea to remove the white. I’ll do that.

If you run into the background staying white after you put the image in google earth, try changing from DirectX to OpenGL mode. As we had one of our computers was unable to display transparency in DX mode. (old old onboard s3 video)

-Wayne

What version of Google Earth is everyone using for this? I’m thinking Pro is the version you would need but that means we would have to buy one for everyone that will use it right? That’s $400/person.

We use the standard (free) version of google earth, works just dandy.

Yeah that works, i guess i would just want one Pro version so i could import lots of points to plot existing/failed customers.

One other thing, is there a way in Google Earth to figure out the distance between 2 points and maybe even see a profile view of the ground between the two points?
We currently use Terrain Navigator Pro for this but if Google can do that also then we won’t have to renew TNP.

That makes good sense. Here we keep the go’s and no-go’s in a database and then just use google maps api to load the points of interest. We find with slower computers that our techs use, we can use grouping and then it works a lot faster. Yeah you have to use both our internal web interface for the google maps api and then load google earth, but trust me it’s loads faster then the alternative on our machines.

We use terrain navigator Pro as well. And that’s great for the line of sight installs and pre-qualifying them because it gives you a ground profile that google earth does not have. Also we use the network version of terrain nav pro and it saved us a lot in license fee’s

So you can determine distance between two points in Google Earth?

yes , there’s a ruler tool that gives you a distance.
I just like terrain navigators los profile feature. which can give me a side view so i can see if my los will traverse through the earth. Something google has yet to impliment. Although that have teamed up with Maptek to get terrain data into Google maps and i would assume earth eventually. So hopefully we can see both products give improvements in what we need.

Honestly I think the best software would allow me to overlay my coverage maps, my customers and my no-go’s all separately. Then another layer for my access points and backhauls which would obtain data through snmp allowing me to view qualatative data on my links essentially providing me a graphical network overview. so basically a multi purpose tool that can fill all my needs, but i think something like that is just me being greedy.

Ok perfect thanks.

Yeah i think i’ll prob get Google Earth Pro for myself so i can import points and setup layers, then have the free version for my sales people so they can just have the coverage overlays for lookups.

Then I’ll just keep my old license of Terrain for “other needs”.

Hi. I know this is an old thread.  I've been using Radio Mobile for years and years, but lately, my ability to download the SRTM data has broken, and I don't know why.  It says "SRTM file not found" and it's set to "Download from intenet and keep a local copy", so I'm guessing it's a problem with my link to the CANADIAN srtm internet data location maybe?