Distances and bearings between points

[DrD]

I think there were worked out examples for antenna pointing applications in the ARRL handbook, or the ARRL Antenna book, maybe even both. There was also an article in a Ham Radio Magazine edition that had details, (with a program example) for antenna pointing. You can probably find that on the web still.

For navigation purposes, given the current state of the art of electronic chart plotters, and GPS technology, it hardly seems worthwhile to calculate such things anymore. Still, it is fun to create the programs!

Then there are the GPS messages, which you might be able decode from a personal GPS handheld such as the Garmin Oregon, or newer, models. At least I had fun doing that. I might be a little on the crazy side, since I also had a vector scope radio transmitter locator that used GPS messages for location purposes. I decoded the GPS messages and kept the location info in a spreadsheet of known interference sites to a natural gas telemetry system used by our local utility. (Retired from that job now, but it was a lot of fun!)

Another thing that is fun to work with is marine AIS. If the hp prime USB by wire evolves sufficiently, you might even be able to take output from a Marine VHF radio and decode the AIS messages, to track commercial vessels within radio range. Even without an AIS radio system, you could still make a program to decode AIS messages.

These things were all a spin off from my interest in similar activities such as you are working with now.

-Dale-