[amsat-bb] PREDICT Version 2.0.2d For DOS Released

[John Magliacane <magliaco@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi folks.

Today I released an updated DOS version of my satellite tracking and
orbital prediction program, PREDICT.  Version 2.0.2d includes the
following changes from the previous version:

* A solar illumination feature was added to predict the percentage
  of time a satellite spends in sunlight per day.

* Orbital predictions for satellites that appear to have decayed
  since the last Keplerian orbital update are no longer attempted
  by the program.

* Date and time used to start orbital predictions may now be
  abbreviated to Day/Month/Year only (00:00:00 is assumed).
  The default remains the current date and time.

* System clock/calendar is now read to millisecond precision,
  permitting more "lively" real-time tracking mode displays.

* The UTC timezone offset now may be set correctly for users living
  in half hour timezones.

* Internal timezone calculations are no longer confused by environmental
  variable TZ.  If TZ is properly set to a timezone name (as required
  by some other satellite tracking programs), the TZ setting is used by
  PREDICT instead of the UTC timezone offset specified in the predict.qth
  file.

* The command-line parsing code was modified to prevent segmentation
  faults from occurring if command-line options are incorrectly issued.

* Some other minor coding changes were made.


PREDICT is free software.  It may be downloaded from
ftp://ftp.amsat.org/amsat/software/PC/tracking/predict2.0.2d.zip

Expect a new Linux version VERY soon.  :-)

Further information regarding PREDICT software available at:

	http://www.linuxfan.com/~predict

An article describing the development and use of PREDICT is expected
to appear in the July (Science and Engineering) issue of "Linux
Journal" magazine.

(Yes, things have been quite hectic lately...)


73, de John, KD2BD

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