New Zealand Radar

[Oblivian]

Yeah the crosses from aus-wlg are a lot thicker than past screenshots, and more solid cover to nelson/kaikoura. Normally those tracks would be a little more spotty and take a lot longer to produce nice lines. That was a little on 24hrs in that screen.

The blue dot waypoints are a GPX file, the tracks are outline files from the basestation addon app SBS-Resource

Will confirm when I get home which ones specifically I'm using. But I think it was the high altitude waypoints, the lower regional ones made it a bit too messy.

From memory its like NZ_Int_wp.out or similar.

http://www.sbs-resources.com/download/index.html

[nzradar]

Craig, what I did to stabilise my DPD was to use three strands of nylon gardening rope, reasonably thin but very strong, Bunnings for this! I tied each strand to the top of the mast just under the base of the antenna but clear of the coaxial cable and used a zip tie to prevent the strands from sliding down the mast. Then each strand goes to a securing point around my house. One comes almost straight down to a garden wall that is only a meter and a half away from the mast and this is the one I secure first, tighten it enough to just bend the mast from vertical by about 2-3cm. Then I secured the other two to my roof using nails hammered in at about 20 degrees from vertical to prevent the knots from slipping off. Tighten these two strands up as if trying to bring the mast back to vertical.

My mast id 4 metres above the roof line and I find this method is very cheap and effective in stabilising the antenna in gale winds. In fact I have even more weigh on it with my VHF dipole sitting just under the DPD, so all's good!

[nzradar]

Pete, there's some outlines including the NZ coast on my web site. Did my GPX waypoint file not work?

[Petenz]

Hi Mike, Yes your waypoint and track files worked, but only show mostly northern tracks and waypoints. Mostly the files I downloaded from SBS resources seem to be .out files and I have no idea how to convert them to .gpx files. Your track files went as far as Christchurch and I am sure there are more further south.I have a perfectly good outline of NZ with waypoints at sea, but none on land after a line across from Christchurch. I inserted one waypoint 'dukop' by manipulating Edit+ on your gpx waypoint file, knowing the Lat and long of 'dukop'.

[Oblivian]

You are confusing the differences. GPX = single GPS point locations, not lines between points. That you need to manually over-lay

.out = outline files (for the shape of NZ, airfields, tracks etc)

Drop .outs into the same folder your GPXs etc are in (the planeplotter chart files folder) and PP will scan that folder and automatically load them all on startup. You can stack up quite a few.

Just found my original post referencing it.

http://forum.flightradar24.com/threads/499-New-Zealand-Radar?p=25962&viewfull=1#post25962

But if you mean the permanent red ones in my pic which are the flightpaths, they are over-laid outline files (NZCH_1012_upper_ats.out) from a zip file full of outline files (From SBSResource app). Theres also a domestic low altitude set but combined the screen gets a bit crowded.

Mike has the waypoints GPS shared here http://nzradar.com/?page_id=849

[nzradar]

Hi Pete, the .out files do not convert to GPX, or at least I have no idea either how to do that!

What I have done to include waypoints of interest is use SkyVector to locate the waypoint, right click to get the position, and then use a website to convert the lat/long to a decimal form, here, and then edit the GPX file mimicking the layout to add additional waypoints. It's a bit fiddly but once you've done it a couple of times you get the hang of it and eventually you have all the waypoints you need in PP.

I hope this helps.

[Petenz]

Many thanks ; I am less confused thankyou Oblivian, but I now seem to have red routes all over the place on my chart. Don't seem to be able to change the colours of the routes so have changed my background colours and contrails which makes it easier to follow. Your help has been invaluble.

[Oblivian]

Theres a trick to that..

zoom in to a level where you can still see the route lines, then you have to be super accurate and LEFT click while holding ctrl (from memory) and it pops up a colour dialogue box.. where you can select a colour. If you aren't clicked right on it, you end up chaging the next closest outline colour

/edit corrected to left button. Which is confirmed

[Petenz]

How on earth did you discover that? Well done Oblivian!

[Oblivian]

Fiddling around, and googling the right terms in the Planeplotter wiki and Mantma FAQ

http://www.mantma.co.uk/pp_faq.html#FAQ111

[41south]

And so it begins .......

Had a play around with a couple of home brew antennas yesterday. One was a 10 element "coax" colinear. I'm pretty sure it worked too well and totally overwhelmed the front end of the port R820T dongle
Second up was this little beastie which is giving me pretty good results .... sticking with the low tech theme as you can see
I've got some LMR400 coming to make up a better colinear and I'll build a proper base for this one today.

20130310_121911.jpg

[North Borneo Radar]

You are confusing the differences. GPX = single GPS point locations, not lines between points. That you need to manually over-lay

.out = outline files (for the shape of NZ, airfields, tracks etc)

Drop .outs into the same folder your GPXs etc are in (the planeplotter chart files folder) and PP will scan that folder and automatically load them all on startup. You can stack up quite a few.

Just found my original post referencing it.

http://forum.flightradar24.com/threads/499-New-Zealand-Radar?p=25962&viewfull=1#post25962

Hi there all,

I have finally succeed in adding waypoints to PP! thanks to this thread and a bit of looking into PP yahoo group.

Now, the next question is... how to manually over-lay the lines between waypoints? Thanks for your help.

[Oblivian]

And so it begins .......

Had a play around with a couple of home brew antennas yesterday. One was a 10 element "coax" colinear. I'm pretty sure it worked too well and totally overwhelmed the front end of the port R820T dongle
Second up was this little beastie which is giving me pretty good results .... sticking with the low tech theme as you can see
I've got some LMR400 coming to make up a better colinear and I'll build a proper base for this one today.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1917[/ATTACH]

I told you you would strive for more lol!

LMR400, from the guys in akl? Mine was about $3.90/m from memory.

My first attempt is just as bad, and yeilds very good results. Infact, similar to what I am getting now on the $200 DPD 9dB colinear without it at its final height! My DIY gives good hits out to about 170nm constatly, with 150 to the north/south and sometimes 190 with high alt ones.

It's quite critical how tall the elements are, and how long the loops are in the middle. I did a mixture of 2 forum results to get it together.

Hi there all,

I have finally succeed in adding waypoints to PP! thanks to this thread and a bit of looking into PP yahoo group.

Now, the next question is... how to manually over-lay the lines between waypoints? Thanks for your help.

Glad we could help.

Those point to point flight lines are based in the outline files I mention, look into the SBSResources app, and find the zip file with your local areas chart/files in it and extract those into the charts folder. They will be named similar with _ILS_ etc in the name possibly. Then again your airport may not have been covered by the developers yet

[Petenz]

Theres a trick to that..

zoom in to a level where you can still see the route lines, then you have to be super accurate and LEFT click while holding ctrl (from memory) and it pops up a colour dialogue box.. where you can select a colour. If you aren't clicked right on it, you end up chaging the next closest outline colour

/edit corrected to left button. Which is confirmed

Using this 'trick' I have now changed a lot of the lines on my chart to make them more compatible with my eyesight. For instance my outline of NZ is now a brilliant green , the routes are a soft grey and my waypoints the same with red triangles below. All this with a black background I have found works very well when you have so much information on the chart.

I have also altered the aircraft view colours to make them so much more readable. Pity Christchurch has such a limited range of international airlines visiting, especially now that Deep Freeze has closed down. NZ and Australian flags predominate on my acft view.

[Oblivian]

Indeed. With the odd USA BizJet (Golfers galore at present) and SQ/UAE/QF dailies.

Reminds me, if anyone was not aware the receiving server for PlanePlotter moved IP 2 days ago, Anyone who uploads 24/7 and has not start/stopped data upload recently will need to do so to get the traffic going to the right place again. Or you may find youself appearing offline and not sharing to anyone watching for shared/MLAT data