Hi Everyone,
I've finally had time to write up a short article about a technique I use when operating the satellites portable -- hand-drawn "radar" plots.
Normally I use a netbook computer running HRD software to show the position of the satellite in the sky in real-time, but there have been occasions when I haven't been able to have the netbook with me. These hand-drawn plots are just the ticket -- it converts a line in the table of numbers from sat prediction software (ie. a print-out of a week's worth of passes from SatPC32, or a print-out from the http://amsat.org satellite tracking module) to a crude radar plot good enough to track the sat pass. Before leaving on a sat-portable road trip, I'll always bring a long printout of passes just in case the computer goes dead, so I'm not stuck without any ability to track.
(Yes, I know there are smartphone apps that will do the same thing, but I don't have a smartphone!)
(And yes, many of you probably already do the same, but up until now I haven't seen any references for how to do this...)
http://kb5wia.blogspot.com/2011/12/manual-radar-plots.html
73 and Happy Holidays!
Dave KB5WIA