PocketBeacon

Version 1.03 for PalmPilot

Copyright © 1997-2003 Chris Terwilliger. All rights reserved.

PocketBeacon is FREEWARE. You may copy or distribute it freely. You may not charge money for it.

The NCDXF/IARU Beacons

The NCDXF/IARU International Beacon Network is a system of 18 CW beacons located around the world which transmit in sequence with varying power levels 24 hours a day. They use identical radios, antennas, and GPS receivers to synchronize their transmissions. The beacons share specific frequencies on five amateur bands: 20, 17, 15, 12, and 10 meters. Each beacon transmits in a predefined, ten-second window, repeating every three minutes.

For further and more current info, visit the NCDXF/IARU web page at:

http://www.ncdxf.org/beacons.html

PocketBeacon

After aquiring a PalmPilot, I started looking for applications to explore the capabilities of the PalmPilot and this seemed like a perfect match. Similar applications that run on DOS/Windows can be found at the above website.

NOTICE: Because of math library limitations, PocketBeacon only runs on version 2.0 ROMS. In addition, you must have MathLib installed on your PalmPilot. MathLib is included in this distribution if you do not already have it. For further info on MathLib go to:

http://www.radiks.net/~rhuebner/mathlib.html

PocketBeacon displays a real-time list of the last, current and next beacon scheduled to transmit on the selected band and updates this list every ten seconds as the transmitting station changes. Information displayed for each station includes the callsign, short path distance in Kilometers, and short path beam heading.

Updates

Updates will be made available as beacons change or are added. New feature suggestions are welcome as well as bug reports. Send all comments to:

chris@searat.com

73, good dxing...
Chris

Revision History

1.03    12-Feb-1999    Fixed floating point errors that corrupted lat/lon settings.  Updated beacons.
1.02    18-Jan-1998    Fixed UTC Offset > 10 bug, added hardware up/dn buttons to freq selection
1.01    15-Oct-1997    Fixed noPreferenceFound bug that pops up first time user goes to settings form.
1.00    13-Oct-1997    Initial release

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