This is not earth-shattering and probably not even original, but I wanted to contribute something in light of all the great information that I have learned from others online.
If you would like to use a custom TLE source in your tracking software (Orbitron in my case), downloading updates can be a manual, multi-step process.
However, it's very easy to automate.
This is one way to make it a lot easier on a Windows machine.
First, you need a utility to download the desired TLE file.
Download wget: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/wget.htm
After extracting/installing wget, be sure to either place the wget executable in a folder in your path (i.e., "C:\Windows\system32"), or add the location where you put wget to your system's PATH environment variable.
Then, create a batch file (i.e., update-TLE.bat) as follows:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- @echo off cls wget http://www.dk3wn.info/tle/amateur.txt -O"D:\Program Files\Orbitron\tle\DK3WN.txt"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
... where the first argument after "wget" is the URL of the TLE file you want, and the file after the "-O" (that's a capital "O") is a file in the folder where your tracking software keeps its TLE files. (use any file name you want as long as it's different from the files already there)
That's it! You can either create a shortcut and run it anytime you want or even put it in your Task Scheduler if you'd like to automate the process.
Thanks again to all the experts who have added so much to my enjoyment of tracking & receiving satellite data!
-Scott, K4KDR Montpelier, VA USA