HFTA Terrain Files - Automated at Last!

KY6LA_Howard

Stu K6TU has automated the process of generating terrain profiles for use with N6BV's HF Terrain Analysis (HFTA) program.

To support HFTA's modeling, a user must first obtain a terrain profile which describes the height of terrain around the antenna location. This process is cumbersome and time consuming as the source of the data must be located, downloaded, then processed with MicroDEM.

Terrain Profile Requests are available to any user with a registered account on K6TU.NET at no charge and no subscription to Stu's propagation prediction service is necessary.

Stu's site maintains copies of both the USGS National Elevation Dataset (for the United States) and the NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission dataset enabling fast turnaround of requests.

FYI – Stu K6TU also is the Author of the Supercheck Partial Files and the rather useful K6TU iPad Control for the Flex 6000 series.

Thanks Stu

Neal_K3NC

Stu is a very creative  and giving guy!

Jon_KF2E

Howard, you should credit the ARRL Contest Update when you cut and paste their article.

Kudos to Stu for another job well done.

Jon...kf2e
 

Paul Christensen, W9AC

Wow, that just made HFTA incredibly easy to use for the masses.  What took anywhere from 15-30 minutes before is now reduced to just entering LAT/LONG then waiting for the result from Stu's web site. 

The usual process requires finding a good map source on-line (half the battle), selecting a map or maps, splicing maps (as many as four maps), combining maps in Microdem, then running the result to get .PRO files.  All this before you can even run HFTA. 

Looks like the terrain capture is good out to 14,400 ft. per radial as suggested by N6BV.  Excellent.

Stu, thanks for making our lives much easier!

Paul, W9AC

Stu Phillips - K6TU

You are all most welcome!  I use HFTA a lot - modeling sites for DXpeditions.  I got tired of having to go through the steps required - even more tedious for sites in the US because the National Elevation Dataset tiles are MUCH larger than those for SRTM (and more accurate).  Downloading even when only one tile is required on a high speed connection takes about 6 minutes...

I have all the NED online and retrieve the SRTM tiles (and then cache them) as needed.

Now the while process takes about 30 seconds!

Hope everyone finds this useful!
Stu K6TU