Click on the buttons below to go to the various
WA8LMF  APRS mapping webservers.

 30 Meters HF    2 Meters VHF    ISS Satgate 

 Special Events Webserver 
(Typically used for balloon launches, hamfests, etc. Not always up.)

 60 Meters APRS Tests 
(Not always up)

 IARU Beacons Monitor 
(Real-Time Monitoring of the 20, 17, 15, 12
and 10-meter IARU HF Propagation Beacons.)
 

NOTE 1:  The pages linked above are on a server hosted on a PC connected to a consumer cable modem account with a 1.5MB/sec upload speed. Due to limited bandwidth of this connection, images may occasionally fail to load if I have other large bandwidth-sucking uploads in progress. If one or more of the maps fail to appear, hit "Refresh" or "Reload" on your browser toolbar.

NOTE 2:  Disable automatic image resizing in your browser. The maps sent by this server are likely to be much larger than your browser window. The automatic downsizing for large images provided in some browsers will make the thin lines and small details on the maps an illegible blur if not turned off. With resizing turned off, you will have to scroll down and/or to the right to see all of the maps.

NOTE 3:  This webserver is using  TCP/IP ports14439, 14441, 14443, 14445 & 14447  rather than the customary port 80 for http .   As a result, you may not be able to access it from some corporate or government Internet connections that severely firewall or otherwise restrict access to uncommon port numbers.

NOTE 4: Propagation on 30 meters HF is highly sensitive to the level of solar activity.  When the solar X-ray flux plotted on the graph below has a baseline above the first major division, or spikes upward (i.e. a solar flare), 30 meters will have very poor conditions, or black out completely, causing very few (or no stations at all) to show on the HF map.

X-ray radiation from the sun travels at the speed of light, reaching the earth in about 8 minutes.   When these intense blasts of X-rays reach the earth, they can temporarily disrupt the ionized layers of the earth's upper atmosphere (the ionosphere). These layers are responsible for reflecting long-range (beyond the horizon) HF radio signals back to earth.  The result is a weakening or even complete fade-out of HF radio signals.

Real-Time Solar Activity Monitor (Last 72 Hours)

(Courtesy of US National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration
 at http://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/goes-xray-flux.gif )

Background on the WA8LMF Webserver Setup

The WA8LMF APRS webserver produces multiple map displays.

• The HF page displays 30-meter (10.149 MHz) HF APRS activity. This is live off-the-air (RF-only) as heard in Haslett, Michigan (near East Lansing, MI); i.e. no Internet APRS feed.
   
• The VHF page displays live off-the-air (RF-only) two-meters activity on 144.39 MHz in central Michigan, as heard in Haslett, MI; i.e. no Internet APRS feed. Three additional maps show expanded detail in the Greater Detroit area, the Lansing-East Lansing area and the Michigan State University campus.
   
• The ISS "satgate" page displays the current position of the International Space Station and it's radio footprint on the ground, in real time, as received from KJ4ERJ's Internet feed.
  
  When the station passes within range of my receive system in Haslett, MI, (typically 500-800 miles / 800-1200 km), live off-the-air (RF-only) position reports from stations on the ground, relayed through the station's digipeater on 145.825 MHz, are plotted on the map.
   
• The Special Events page is used for ham fests, balloon launches and other one-time events. It is not always up. It usually produces two maps: One shows the vicinity of the event at county or state level; the other is a close-up aerial photo view of the venue.

These displays are served by the UI-Webserver component of three copies of UI-View32 running simultaneously on the same computer. The VHF and ISS "Satgate" instances are running in two separate VMware virtual machines using micro-Server2003. The HF page is running directly on the Win7 host. All instances are connected to APRS Internet servers using filter ports set to receive JUST my own callsign, the ISS space station object, and the US National Weather Service feed.   All stations heard off-the-air in all three instances are passed to the APRS Internet System; i.e. all three instances function as igates.

• 30M HF is being received with the UZ7HO "Soundmodem" software packet TNC,  the CrossCountry Wireless "APRS Messenger" APRS-over-PSK63 program running on the same soundcard,  and a Yaesu FT-891 transceiver connected to a homebrew magnetic loop antenna.
   
• 2M VHF is being received with the left channel of a second copy of the UZ7HO Soundmodem, and a Kenwood TM-211 transceiver connected to a Comet 2M/UHF 19' "SuperGainer" collinear.
   
• The space station is being received with the right channel of the second copy of the UZ7HO Soundmodem, a Kenwood TM-221 and an Icom AH-7000 discone antenna.
   
• The special events page is normally generated by an APRS Internet feed, rather than directly off the air with a radio and TNC.

All instances of UIview are set to capture and date-time-stamp an image of their map automatically every 2 minutes.

• Instance 1, a.k.a "US 30M HF", shows a static map (captured from Precision Mapping 9.0) of the entire continental U.S. and the southern part of Canada.  From time to time, this may be pre-empted by a live dynamic map for a special event such as a balloon launch.
   
• Instance 2, a.k.a. "Central Michigan 144.39 MHz", shows a static map (captured from Precision Mapping 9.0) showing the southern half of the lower peninsula of Michigan and surrounding areas, from Chicago, Illinois in the west to Cleveland, Ohio in the east. This is an area about 340 miles (about 540 KM) across west-to-east.  Two meter tropo openings are evident on this map, when stations start appearing from the western shore of Lake Michigan, and from east of London, Ontario or Cleveland.
   
• Instance 3, a.k.a. "Tracking ISS"  normally shows the color relief map of the whole world provided with UIview. When the station approaches within about 4000 miles ( 6400 KM) of my QTH in central Michigan, the map automatically switches to a larger relief view of just North America captured from Precision Mapping.  When the station is within 2000 miles (3200 KM) of my QTH, the map switches to a still larger view of the eastern US and Canada. This map has the usual political color shading by state/province and no relief.

All of this, along with EchoLink, mmSSTV and EasyPal "digital" SSTV is running on an Acer 756 "netbook" PC dedicated to 24/7 "Ham SuperServer" duty.  (Review here)