POWER-HEIGHT-GAIN: This optional field replaces the CSE/SPD fields with a report of transmitter power, antenna height-above-average-terain and antenna gain. APRS uses this to plot radio range circles around all stations. The following details the format to be used in the BText of a TNC dedicated as an APRS digipeater: !DDMM.mmN/DDDMM.mmW#PHG5360/WIDE...(identifying comments)... | | | | |||| |_____ makes station show up green | | | | ||||________ Omni (Direction of max gain) | | | | |||_________ Ant gain in dB | | | | ||__________ Height = log2(HAAT/10) LAT LONG | | |___________ Power = SQR(P) | |_____________ Power-Height-Gain identifier * |_______________ # is symbol for digipeater As you can see by the integers in the PHG string, there are only 10 possible values for each of these fields as follows: DIGITS 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Equation ------------------------------------------------------------------- POWER 0, 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81 watts SQR(P) HEIGHT 10,20,40, 80,160,320,640,1280,2560,5120 feet LOG2(H/10) GAIN 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 dB DIR omni,45,90,135,180,225,270, 315, 360, . deg (D/45) The DIRECTIVITY field offsets the PHG circle by one third in the indicated direction. This means a front to back range of 2 to 1. Most often this is used to indicate a favored direction or a null even though an OMNI antenna is at the site. Note that 0 means OMNI and 8 means 360 or a NORTH offset. HIGHTS are ABOVE-AVERAGE TERRAIN! Not above ground or sea level. ALso, since DOS version 8.0 the Height character may be any ASCII character 0-9 and above. This is so that higher heights for aircraft or satellites may be incorporated. On receipt, the PHG values are converted to a usable radio range using the following algorithms: POWER = P^2 H = 10 as a default H = ASCII(Hchar)-51 converts it to a decimal value HAAT = 10*2^H GAIN = 10^(G/10) converts from DB to decimal RANGE = SQR(2*H*SQR((P/10)*(GAIN/2)))