SpectrumWatch News - February 2003

SpectrumWatch News • February 2003 • Volume 1 • Issue 2

SpectrumWatch is the premier online system for the selection and acquisition of land mobile radio licenses.
We offer three subscription levels:
1) Free Public WebForm 601 Account - Register online to file Form 601 applications yourself. Select a coordinator, fill out the form using our advanced Tree View navigation system, and click "Notify" when the application is ready for coordination. Manage your applications using My Account - My Apps. Also, you have access to SpectrumWatch Free Tools such as Find States, Distance and Bearing, Find Elevation, and Cellular Architecture Database.
2) Upgrade to Radio Tools Account - Read and sign our Engineering Contract. This subscription level offers advanced engineering tools, such as AutoX, SpectrumWatch's frequency check and frequency find tool. Other tools include ULS Search, Canadian Search, Airport Search, HAAT, DHAAT, Short Spacing, Safe Harbor, Borders/Zones, Reference Lookup (Lookup frequencies and limitations from FCC Part 90), and Service Contours.
3) Coordinator Account - * Available only for FCC designated coordinators. Coordinators can file Form 601 applications and also have advanced Form 601 features such as Check Apps, Change Status, Send Emails, and Track Apps. Coordinators also have the ability to generate reports and manage applications.

If you are interested in registering or upgrading your SpectrumWatch account, contact us at 1-800-445-0297 or service@spectrumwatch.com.

NEW: Form 601 Notes

Now, you can write memos or notes on a Form 601 application. The equivalent of the yellow sticky note, these notes stay with the application for easy reference. Access Notes from the Form 601 Header or Tools section of the Sidebar.

More Icons!

New Header
New Tools section of the Sidebar

AutoX Fixes

AutoX includes the following fixes:

Improved searching for the Applications database

Fix for calculating estimated distances for area of operation A and P

AutoX from Form 601

New! When you click on the Location View page, you can now click on the AutoX icon to prefill the latitude and longitude.

The Location View page can be accessed in two ways:
1) Click on the Locations link from the Tree View or the specific location such as Loc 1 (see #1 in picture below)
2) Click on the Locations link from the yellow toolbar on the bottom of the page (see #2 in picture below)

From the Location View page, if the latitude and longitude exists for the location, the AutoX icon will appear (see #3 in picture below). Clicking on the icon will open a new AutoX window and prefill the latitude and longitude. The name will also be prefilled with the location number and application number.

Large AutoX Queries

Some AutoX searches are much slower than others:
1) Those searching distances greater than 100
2) Those searching frequency range greater than 10 MHz
If either of these criteria are met, a confirmation box will warn you that the search may be slow (30 minutes or longer).

We have recently had users searching in metropolitan areas with a distance of 300 miles (which covers multiple states) within a wide frequency range. These searches took over 45 minutes, eventually timed out, or crashed. Try to limit you searches to get the best and fastest results.

Example: In one particular large search,
   Latitude = 41-xx-xx N Longitude = 74-xx-xx W
   Co-Dist = 300 Adj-Dist = 15
   851-866 MHz

To give you an idea of what's going on behind the scene...this search returned over 966,000 records. AutoX calculates the distance for each of these records then processes the data before returning the final result.

NOTE: Searches will soon be restricted by input and by number of retrieved rows. Also, a new pricing scheme for AutoX searches will be determined at a later date.

Form 601 - Tree View Limits

In the Form 601 Tree View, there is a maximum of 200 nodes. A node is a location, antenna, frequency or emission.
For example: 2 Locations, 2 Antennas, 4 Freqs, and 4 Emissions = 12 nodes