Sunrise Sunset Utility Program
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If you are a DX'er at heart, then you know that the best time for chasing DX is the hours just before and after Sunrise and Sunset. While you might know your sunrise/sunset time from experience, finding these times for a DX country and converting them to a UTC time can be a bit difficult.
The last time I tried to do this on the web, I came up with 15,000 hits and the first one I selected was a porn site. I did manage to find a site that did a very good job and their calculation code was available for download. Unfortunately it was in JavaScript, but I was able to convert it an use it with this program.
Using the program is quite simple. On the first run you will need to set your location on the configuration page.
You can either input your latitude and longitude, or your Maidenhead Grid locator. One will compute the other. Select the unit of choice for distance measurements and click Accept. These settings will be stored in the registry.
To use the program you can select a country from the drop-down list and a day from the calendar. If you do not know the name of the country, you can use the prefix option. In the prefix box, type just the first letter of the call sign prefix and you will get a list of matching prefix/country combinations in the drop-down list. To get the full list of countires, make sure the prefix box is empty.
Click on the country and you will get all the information about that country: Approximate latitude and longitude, along with a matching Maidenhead Grid Locator for those coordinates, the sunrise, sunset and solar noon in UTC and your local time and the bearing and distance to/from the selected location.
The same information is also displaced for your location. All times are computed based on UTC. The local time conversion is based on your computers time zone selection |
