[ITS-EXEC] ITS VHF Combined "Coverage" Plot

[Matthew Currie]

Group,

I have created a draft combined Cartesian plot for the Island Trunk
System VHF system.  I am unable at this time to merge the UHF coverage
foot print in but I expect to be able to arrive at a solution soon.

I recommend we develop an agreed upon procedure for doing this in the
future such as RF threshold (uV/dBm) levels, colors, references, etc.

I have used Radio Mobile, combined with the latest SRTM (vector topo
data) from the Federal Government which is 8.8 GB in size for BC.  I
then used information that I painfully compiled over months from
scattered sources.  While entering the data I realized I have more
questions which I will begin confirming soon.  I will release a data
sheet with the information I have on the various repeater sites for site
owners to confirm.

This plot took my computer, a Pentium-4 3GHz nearly 2 hours just to
crunch the data to create this combined plot.  Instead of my usual
"rainbow" of different RSSI values I have decided to open discussion on
making a more user-friendly "Coverage Plot" similar to what the cellular
industry uses.  I chose -110 dB as being the cutoff (the TM-D710A
transceiver has an RX 12dB SINAD of -117 on VHF/FM for example).  So
this basically says that if you have -110dB of receive sense or greater
in the green area, you can "hear" the repeaters. You could also say that
the areas in green have 0.71uV or greater RF.  Of course, we may also
want to discuss an approach for showing "usability" as opposed to
"transmitter coverage" but this will certainly complicate things.

http://www.ve7na.ca/images/ITS_Coverage_VHF.png

I will likely change the color, add cities, references, etc. but this
was enough for tonight.  More to come.  I will also remove the base
images as being the topographical (3D) map and instead use a territorial
map that shows cities, etc.  It will be far more useful to the users
this way.

Matthew Currie  VE7MJC