New Tool on RabbitEars
By Trip Ericson on Monday, July 26 2010, 02:41 - Site Updates - Permalink
In between my schoolwork, I've been spending a lot of time working on a new tool for RabbitEars. A few people have already seen it, but to many others, it will be brand new. Or, very old, depending on how you look at it.
Now located in the Tools menu, or by clicking here, you can now see the RabbitEars TV Query. It is a clone of the FCC's TV Query, but with some more features. Take it for a spin and let me know what you think, both good and bad, as well as what could be improved on it.
And there are definitely more things I'd like to add to it, but I decided I wanted to go ahead and launch it now to get feedback from as many people as possible. So try it out and let me know!
Comments
Here are a few suggestions.
1). I really like the use of both Imperial and Metric for HAAT. That makes us easy for those of us in the USA to visualize how much height there is for a facility.
Similarly, I'd like to see the latitude and longitude also expressed in DD.MMSS notation as well as the current DD-MM-SS style.
2). And, presuming this a easy to implement, how about making the antenna coordinates a link to a map site so that we can see the transmission facility.
Aside from that, I prefer your presentation of the material compared to way it looks on CDBS.
I implemented your suggestions, plus added a preview of the directional pattern. What do you think?
Like Tony the Tiger says: Grrrr-eat!
Hossein Hashemzadeh and Dale Bickel could learn much from you about making information more accessible.
I wouldn't be so hard on those guys. They have other matters to attend to that don't leave them much breathing room on these things. Especially now that the FCC is talking about moving everything into a single database, I doubt they want to do much coding with regard to the CDBS anymore.
I just now thought of a feature for TVQ. In the listing, also reveal the virtual channel number.
While doing some DXing tonight, I saw a good flat signal for RF-24 on the Sencore and then switched the F-connector to the television. I just got enough of a lock to see that it mapped to virtual 32 but no PSIP.
Using the existing TVQ, I determined it was KTAB in Abilene (only a bout 165 miles away). But also showing the virtual channel on this page would make the process of elimination easier.