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5. Headings and propagation

There are three commands in DXSpider to help you get the best DX possible. These are SHOW/SUN, SHOW/MOON and SHOW/HEADING. These commands will only work for you if you have entered your personal details. They use your entered location as a reference, so if you have not entered it or have entered it incorrectly they will not return the correct information.

5.1 Sun

The SHOW/SUN command can be used in three different ways. It can be used to show sunrise and sunset times for your own station, a particular callsign or a prefix.

Example:

show/sun

The output from this would look something like this ..

sh/sun
Location                              Rise   Set      Azim   Elev
G0VGS  Morecambe, Lancashire          07:08Z 17:39Z  205.3   24.1

sh/sun 5b4

would look like this ...

sh/sun 5b4
Location                              Rise   Set      Azim   Elev
5B     Cyprus-5B                      04:23Z 15:40Z  244.0   18.8  

You can also specify multiple arguments like this ...

sh/sun gw4veq 5b4ab zs

and then the output would look like this ...

sh/sun gw4veq 5b4ab zs
Location                              Rise   Set      Azim   Elev
GW4VEQ Brungwran, Isle of Anglesey IO 07:14Z 17:48Z  204.9   24.9
5B     Cyprus-5B                      04:23Z 15:40Z  244.5   18.3
ZS     So-Africa-ZS1-ZS               04:31Z 17:28Z  289.9   41.3
ZS     So-Africa-ZS5-ZS               03:44Z 16:34Z  278.5   32.0
ZS     So-Africa-ZS6-ZS               03:59Z 16:42Z  277.6   35.0 

5.2 Moon

The SHOW/MOON command works in the same way as the SHOW/SUN command. This program however, calculates the rise and set times of the moon for a prefix or callsign, together with the current azimuth and elevation of the sun at these locations.

Example:

show/moon ea

The output from this command would look like this ..

sh/moon ea
Location                              Rise   Set      Azim   Elev  RGain dB
EA     Spain-EA                       08:15Z 20:09Z  257.2    9.5      -0.6  

You can see that the output is similar to the SHOW/SUN command, with slightly different fields.

5.3 Heading

The SHOW/HEADING command works in the same way as the SHOW/SUN and SHOW/MOON commands but outputs beam headings for a specified callsign or prefix. Reciprocal beam headings are also calculated.

Example

show/heading zl

The output from this command would look like this ..

sh/heading zl
ZL New-Zealand-ZL1-ZL: 7 degs - dist: 11238 mi, 18087 km Reciprocal heading: 355 degs
ZL New-Zealand-ZL2-ZL: 9 degs - dist: 11540 mi, 18574 km Reciprocal heading: 353 degs
ZL New-Zealand-ZL3-ZL: 19 degs - dist: 11634 mi, 18724 km Reciprocal heading: 345 degs
ZL New-Zealand-ZL4-ZL: 34 degs - dist: 11783 mi, 18963 km Reciprocal heading: 332 degs


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