[time-nuts] Azimuth/elevation dependent satellite masking

[Mark Sims]

Lady Heather collects a running average of the sat signal levels seen at a given az/el (on 1 degree boundaries).  From this data it calculates the satellite elevation mask angle as the lowest elevation that exceeds (0.875*max_signal_level).  This cutoff was determined emprically.   Once you get below 0.875*max the signal quality drops rapidly.  On the attached plot,  the calculated cutoff elevation was 38 degrees.

I played around some with masking sats that were in poor signal areas,  but the problem I wound up with is once you exclude a sat the Tbolt firmware no longer tracks its position so you don't know when its safe to start using it again.    To determine that properly you would need to model the sat orbits, etc.  It opens up a rather messy can of worms...



 		 	   		  
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