V-Soft Communications Newsletter: 10/23/07
In this Newsletter:
FCC Media Bureau & International Bureau Acquire AM-Pro 2
Probe 3 to Get Automatic Update
2006 TIGER Political Boundary Dataset Now Available
2000 U.S. Island Area Census Available
MWave- Pro Premiered at Radio Show
V-Soft Communications announced today that that the Federal Communications Commission has acquired 11 licenses of V-Soft’s award winning AM-Pro 2 software, used for groundwave, skywave allocation analysis, and RSS nighttime interference calculations. Nine of the eleven licenses were purchased by the Audio Division of the Media Bureau, where the programs will be used as a primary resource tool by the AM engineering staff. The remaining two licenses were purchased by the International Bureau.
Doug Vernier, V-Soft Communication’s President stated, “We are pleased to have our software recognized for its capabilities by the FCC and we are delighted to see it become an industry standard.”
In a separate purchase, the FCC’s Office of Engineering Technology (OET) Division has acquired V-Soft’s acclaimed Probe 3 propagation prediction program which specializes in FM, TV and communications propagation prediction and interference analysis. Last year, the Department of Industry Canada, Canada’s broadcast technical regulatory body, acquired four Probe 3 licenses which they use on a regular basis.
Very soon, V-Soft's Probe 3 program will incorporate an automatic update that will be implemented in two stages. In Probe, there will be a new an item under the Help menu allowing a user to set the update settings including the username, password, location of where to save previous versions, and number of backups to keep.
There will be another option allowing a user to check for updates, which will tell a user whether or not an update is available, display the updates to the new version, and provide the ability to download and install the update.
After the update has been downloaded, the user will receive a successful update confirmation message and the program will restart.
In the second stage of the update, the user will not have to select to download the update; Probe will automatically check for updates when the program is opened, and present the update available window when necessary.
Another V-Soft program, FMCommander, also has an automatic update function of both the FM database and the program executable itself.
2006 TIGER Political Boundary Update
V-Soft has officially released the 2006 TIGER Political Boundary update dataset for Probe 3 and AM-Pro 2. The new dataset, derived from data collected in 2006 by the Census Bureau, includes improved city boundaries and county lines, and Urban Area Boundaries, in addition to completely new datasets such as County Subdivision Boundaries, Landmark Boundaries, and Landmark Point Data. The Landmark data is separated into several unique categories such as Military (Installations or Reservations), Housing (Apartments, Mobile Home Parks, Hotels, etc.), Educational (Schools, Museums, Libraries, etc.), Transportation (Airports, Train Stations, Bus Terminals, etc.), and more. For more information or to order the new political boundary datasets, email Adam or give us a call (1-800-743-3684). Top
2000 U.S. Island Area Census Available
V-Soft has recently processed and made available for Probe 3 and AM-Pro the U.S. Island Area census data from the 2000 U.S. SF1 Census. The database contains block level data for US Virgin Islands (VI), Guam (GU), American Samoa (AS), and Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana (MP). If you are interested in the U.S. Island Area census, email Adam or feel free to call!
MWave-Pro Premiered at NAB Radio Show
Microwave Pro is designed to use data from the FCC's ULS database to examine new proposed microwave links. The program uses terrain based analysis in conjunction with methodology found in TIA document TSB10-F. When supplied with the parameters for a proposed path, Microwave Pro can quickly load all stations that have a potential interference relationship, calculate C/I ratios, and show which paths cause and receive interference with respect to the proposed path. A merge list of contact information for paths within the "keyhole" radius from the proposed path can be generated for purposes PCN coordination.
Key Features:
For information about purchasing MWave-Pro call, Adam Puls or Doug Vernier at
V-Soft.
V-Soft Tutorial: How to do a Probe 3 NCE 307(b) Study
The objective of this tutorial is to perform a fair distribution of service noncommercial educational (NCE) study using Probe 3's cull feature . There are multiple ways to do this study, but this method will focus on using solely Probe 3 and its cull the FCC's station database feature.
- Select your reference station and add it to the list of stations to be considered.
- Click the "Cull" button to the left of the station list. Click on the "station" button in the reference point section of
the cull window and accept your reference station.
- Use the following parameters to query the database:
- "Distance Less Than 150 km". The distance
will vary depending on the class of your reference station.
Because the reference station, in this example, is a class C and the maximum distance of its 60 dBu contour is
92 km, A distance approximately 50% larger than 60 dBu distance was used
in our study to be sure that all relevant stations were included."
LicType Contains LI" to include all licensed facilities.
"Channel Less Than 221" is to limit the search to the reserved band.
"Service Contains M" is used to consider only full service facilities.
- Because the NCE 307(B) study must also consider all new CP's and CP's that have been filed for existing facilities, one more step
must be taken. Make sure the checkbox that says "Clear List on Query" is unchecked, and change the requested LicType from LI
to CP. This will add all the CP's to the previous list that meet the same criteria as the LI facilities.
- After determining the appropriate facilities to include, click the "OK" button from the cull list (above) to add the resulting stations to the list of stations to be considered. Since the resulting query also included the reference station, the duplicated record for the reference station should be removed. It is recommended that the second entry for the reference station be removed to ensure the reference station is still the first station in the list (This will come in handy later.)
- Click "Next" on the Wizard to finish and draw the base map containing the selected stations. Using the Multiple Contour Add tool, add the 60 dBu contours to all the stations at once using the respective transmitter color for the color of the contour.
- Use the Contour Overlap tool to build overlap areas. Make sure your reference station is the selected
station in the
drop down menu (this is where keeping the reference station as the first station in the list of stations to be considered comes in handy), change the Maximum Number of Services to 3, and change the color of the Third Service to white.
- We suggest using a lightened version
of a color so that call letters and other text shows up properly over the
colored 1st and 2nd service areas.
- After building the overlap areas, the Service Count Report can be generated by clicking on the button at the bottom of the Contour
Overlap window and the area of the 60 dBu contour of the reference station can also be calculated. Click and drag to highlight the Service
Count Population Report, and click the "Copy to Clipboard" icon at the top of the window. The area of the 60 dBu contour can be calculated by performing a population report on
the reference station's 60 dBu contour.
- These can then be added to the map by adding a text box and then pasting the Service Count Population Report in the text box. The 60 dBu area can added to the transmitter properties text box of the reference station, and the irrelevant stations can be removed.
- Once you have added the services population count and your logo, you are done. Top
To determine which station CPs should be considered, consult the FMQuery section of the FCC's website and use the "Application List" link. This list provides access to all applications filed by the licensee. If a license has not been filed for a given station's CP you should not include it.. The irrelevant facilities may be removed from the query results list, shown above, by using the "Remove" button.
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