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The FCC publishes radio station contours as 360 latitudes and longitudes (ie one every degree of a circle) and connects the "dots". The result is a contour of a particular strength of a radio station plotted on a map. How difficult would it be to take this file and make it appear on a mappoint base map?
Thanks !!

Hi,

I think you just have to calculate lat/long of center, then the severa radus and draw shape call to draw it on map. Did I understand right ?

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The FCC also gives you the stations' coordinates (the center of the contour), but because the terrain is used in the actual contour calculation, (leave that part to the FCC) one cannot simply use the station location and draw a circle. The actual FCC contour is 360 points connected by a line from point to point. 0 degree pointA to 1 degree pointB to 2 degree pointC, etc. The result is close to a circle in most cases, but some stations use directional antennas so you cant really use a circle. I guess I am looking for a way to import their data (36 values in the form DDMMSS lat, DDMMSS long. )and connect each previous location in the table to form a circle.

PS
But as an approximation, how would I take for example, 20 stations in a market (ie 20 seperate locations of know lat/long) and draw a crude approximation of these 20 coverage areas using a circle (assume I know the radius for each one)?

Thanks again.

It should be easy enough to draw, but you'll need to do some custom programming.

Read each pair. Parse and convert to decimal degrees. Add a point to a new shape.

You could do this by hand, but it would take a very long time. Eg. one of your contours requires 360 points to be plotted.

Richard

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Can you post a sample of the data?