Distance and Bearing

by WA5ZNU

These command-line utilities calculate great-circle distance and bearing using the Haversine formula.

Usage

The bearing program takes a QRA (Maidenhead Grid) parameter and prints both the bearing and anti-bearing (180 degrees off) for use with a SteppIR Yagi or for long-path. It accepts an optional second parameter (a number, optionally negative) which is added to the bearing before being printed. You can use this feature to correct for rotor misalignment.

The distance program prints the distance in miles. You can easily change it to kilometers.

Examples

$ bearing EM41sf
94/274
$ bearing EM41sf -37
57/237
$ distance EM41sf
1846.47

Configuration

Edit the two files and change the line after "Set your QRA here." You can set either QRA or latitude and longitude.

Requirements

Requires Python

Download

• bearing
• distance

See Also

You might also like the DXQRA, which converts callsign prefixes to beam headings and country names. DXQRA Requires a web browser that supports the XForms standard, such as Firefox.