Ham CAP 1.8

Ham CAP 1.8

HF propagation prediction tool for Amateur Radio

FREEWARE

System Requirements

Hardware:

• 600 MHz Pentium II CPU;
• 64 Mb RAM;
• 16-bit or 32-bit color video card.

Software:

• Windows 95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP/7;
• VOACAP (a.k.a. itshfbc, a.k.a. hfwin32).

Installation and Configuration

• Download HamCAP.zip from the Downloads section of this web site, unzip and run Setup.exe. Follow the on-screen instructions;
• download VOACAP from this web site: www.greg-hand.com
• install VOACAP. You will not have to run VOACAP directly, Ham CAP will use it behind the scenes;
• run Ham CAP from the Windows Start menu, click on the Settings tab, and enter your latitude and longitude;
• click on the Ant tab, select the appropriate antennas, verify the antenna patterns.

You are now ready to use Ham CAP.

Screenshots

Area coverage map

Area coverage map in pseudo-colors

Signal-to-Noise Ratio vs. time and frequency

Antenna selection page

On-line Interactive Maps

If you are planning on a DXpedition, consider adding an interactive propagation map to your web site (see example). To create the map:

• configure HamCap (set your QTH, year, month, SSN, antenna types, etc.);
• right-click on the map and click on Pre-Compute Maps in the popup menu;
• wait until all maps are computed. Depending on your CPU speed, this may take from 10 to 40 min.;
• right-click on the map holding the Ctrl button down to open the popup menu with advanced commands, and click on Generate GIF’s. HamCap will create a set of GIF files, with hourly propagation maps for each band. The maps will be stored in the Gifs subdirectory of the HamCap directory;
• download the  HTML script for map browsing, and modify it to match the style of your web site;
• upload the script and the images to the web server and place them in the same directory.

After the expedition, please search your logs for “VE3NEA” and send me your QSL if I worked you 😉

Integration

If you have IonoProbe installed on your system, go to the Settings tab in Ham CAP and press the IonoProbe button. IonoProbe will provide real time ionospheric indices to Ham CAP, and the prediction will be automatically updated when the indices change.

DX Atlas adds even more power to Ham CAP. Make sure you have DX Atlas installed, then press the DX Atlas button on the Settings tab. The area prediction data will be superimposed on the DX Atlas map, and you will be able to magnify and scroll the map, and view it in the Azimuthal and 3D projections.

(click to enlarge)



Ham CAP provides a COM/OLE Automation interface that 3-rd party programs can use to start Ham CAP, set prediction parameters, and run predictions. In a typical application integrated with Ham CAP, the user will right-click on a callsign, and Ham CAP will pop up and display the point-to-point propagation chart. A sample automation code is provided in the Programmer’s Corner section.

Third Party Tutorials

HamCap User’s Guide by OH6BG
HamCap tutorial by VE3SUN
HamCAP Contest Tutorial by N3TL