SatScape v.1.88

Forget about your favorite tracking program from DOS. After all, you are the owner of a powerful computer with enormous possibilities, so why not use them? A few years ago, when I started getting more interested in satellites, I used TrakSat. It was replaced by WinOrbit. But in the new PC, the S3 graphics were replaced by the powerful Matrox Millenium, with which I have not parted with WinOrbit. And so the time has come for a new tracking program.

Almost every satellite HAM would think to look at the AMSAT website. But there you will quickly find that you can order a CD, but download almost nothing. Thank goodness there are search engines. That's how I got to the site www.nlsa.com a www.satscape.co.uk . The second named page is the home page of the SatScape program, which I downloaded (approx. 7MB).

The installation went smoothly. After the first launch, however, a problem arose - the geographic location can be entered in both decimal and degree form. In one of them (I don't remember which one) the program threw an error message. And there was joy. But it works in the second form, so it requires a little understanding.

A quick look at the menu seems to be again nothing much. So let's try a 2-D (planar) view of the satellite sky. Aaaah - great! Super graphics, information about the satellite (frequency, history), about the position of the Sun and the Moon.... In addition, this information can be easily hidden so as not to interfere.

I try to give a list of satellite predictions - and the program throws up an error message again. I'm starting to lose my temper... Did I drag those megabytes for nothing? I'll try something else - and in fact, there is an excellent trip planner under "Pass predictions". All you have to do is select a satellite and press "calculate". Tours will appear immediately on the current or selected day. How about AO-7 and AO-40 for a month and print? No problem. Just select "Preset predictions, select satellites and period, whether I want to save the results in a text file or print them... Confirm at the end and then "Run selected job..." Simple...

The mood is rising - let's see what the "Panoramic horizon view" is. It's a view of the night sky from your QTH s družicami. Ak je vonku jasno a viete, kde je sever, skúste sa pozrieť tam, kam program ukazuje….

3D-view is king in SatScape. Have you ever seen the Earth with several hundred orbiting satellites? You simply cannot miss this theater.

Additional services such as updating "Kepler", synchronizing clocks in the PC with the time base or updating data on satellites, the possibility of a voice alert on the satellite...

Scot Hather's program narrowly missed out on an "excellent" rating. If it weren't for those error messages, there would be nothing to discuss. It may be a coincidence caused by PC HW+SW. I use a K6/II-350 with 96MB RAM and the mentioned Matrox Millenium G200 and W98. I would like to point out that in order to enjoy 3D, you need to have DirectX 8.1 installed. So what is the name of your new tracking program?