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HZ1JW Software

Introduction

pythonProp is a collection of Python 3 scripts designed to create voacap input (.dat) files and plot the resulting predictions.  The package makes use of the matplotlib and cartopy libraries.

The package is released under the GPL license so may be freely modified. Please post any changes that may be of use to others via the contact details at the bottom of the page.

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Screenshots

See below for a few screen shots of the voacapgui application and some plots produced with the pythonProp utilities;
Input File voaP2PPlot voacapgui Multiple voaP2PPlot voa3dplot
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voacapgui

An input GUI for voacapl.  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' or from the Gnome desktop with the application command 'voacapgui'.

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voaP2PPlot

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 application supports time shifting of the lower (GMT)

Refer to the man page for details.

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voaAreaPlot

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.

Gridsize : 59 1

See the man page for details.

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Downloads

The latest version of the scripts is available from the Github repositary at https://github.com/jawatson/pythonprop/releases.

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Installation

The scripts require the 'matplotlib' and cartopy ' toolkits.

Ubuntu (19.10)

Install the required dependancies with the following command;

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential python3-matplotlib python3-cartopy python3-scipy

Fedora (F31)

Install the required dependancies with the following command;

$ sudo dnf install automake python3-matplotlib python3-cartopy python3-scipy

Download the pythonProp package from Github and use the following commands to install the scripts;

$ gunzip -c pythonProp-x.xx.tar.gz | tar x
$ cd pythonProp-x.xx
$ ./autogen
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

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

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Acknowledgements & Disclaimer

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

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