pythonProp

pythonProp is a collection of Python scripts designed to plot files produced by VOACAP.  The package currently contains two scripts, both of which make use of the matplotlib library (voaAreaPlot also requires the basemap toolkit.)

Feel free to modify the scripts to suit your own needs, I only ask that if you make a change, or incorporate a feature that you feel would benefit other users, that you let me know so I can include it here.

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This script plots the output of a Point-to-Point prediction. Signal to Noise (SNR), Reliability (REL), Maximum Usable Frequency (MUF) or Received Signal Strength (S DBW) may be plotted.  The above plot is a Point-to-Point circuit reliability prediction for the path between Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) and Aberystwyth (Wales).  The lower axis (time) has been shifted +3 hours using the '-z' argument to display in Saudi local time and the plot overlayed with the UK HF bandplan.

This script updates the earlier 'mufPlot' which is no longer actively maintained.

Refer to the man page for details.

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This script plots the output of VOAARea predictions (.VGx files). Signal to Noise (SNR), Reliability (REL) or Maximum Usable Frequency (MUF) may be plotted. To produce correct type of input projection data files, the projection type flag in the input file's GRIDSIZE card must be set to '1', i.e.

See the man page for details.

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A beta version of an input GUI for voacap.  This is under active development - please pass on any feature requests / bug reports.

The program is started from the command line with the command 'voacapgui'.

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The latest version of the scripts is available on the sourceforge site; https://sourceforge.net/projects/pythonprop/.

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The scripts require the 'matplotlib' library and associated 'basemap' toolkit.  These libraries are under constant development and scripts written to work with one version may break on others. Version 0.6 of the scripts has been written/tested against Matplotlib (v0.98.5.2) and Basemap (v0.99.3). This currently requires all users to install these packages from source.

Matplotlib and basemap require a few dependencies that may be installed from distribution repositories.

Fedora (F10):  Numpy (v1.2.0) may be installed with the following 'yum' command;

Ubuntu:  Install Numpy (v1.2.1) and a few development libraries with the following command;

The tcl and tk libraries in the Jaunty repositaries need a couple of symbolic links;

All Distributions:   The matplotlib and basemap toolkit may now be installed from source. Download the source files from here.  Once downloaded, follow the instructions to compile and install the toolkit with the usual setup.py commands;

Note: If you didn't install it earlier as one of the dependencies, don't forget to build the 'geos' package when building the basemap toolkit

Other Platforms:  If anyone has advice on how to install these libraries on other platforms, please let me know how so that I can post instructions here.

All Platforms: Once the matplotlib libraries are installed on your system, download the pythonProp package from the link above and use the following commands to install the scripts;

The installer places the python scripts in /usr/local/share/pythonProp and shell script 'wrappers' in /usr/local/bin.

Upgrading From Earlier Versions: Earlier distributions placed the mufPlot, voaAreaPlot.py and voafile.py in /usr/local/bin. It's probably wise to delete these older files.  Fedora users that have used the matplotlib and basemap provided from repositories may wish to delete them first ('yum remove ...') to prevent and possibility for conflicts with the versions installed from source.

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Sincere thanks to Jari Perkiömäki (OH6BG), Alex Hill (G7KSE), Lowell (KC7DX) and Andreas Weller for bug testing, support and suggestions.

Thanks also to the folks at NodeThirtyThree for the templates.

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