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Reviews For: Nova for Windows

Category: Ham Software/Apps - Other than logging

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Review Summary For : Nova for Windows
Reviews: 15MSRP: 59.95
Description:
Satellite Tracking Software
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.nlsa.com/
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00153.8
W3EOA Rating: 2005-01-11
Super Help from Michael Owen!!! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
After using NOVA for a number of years, I messed up an update process and got my program hosed up so nothing worked. Could not Un-install old version and could not install update either. Called Michael Owen and he sent me the information I needed.

Total time down fussing with things ... about six weeks. Total time after calling Michael ... less than ONE HOUR ... call to fixed and running.

Can't beat that!!!

Herb, W8HRN (ex-W3EOA)
ON4SKY Rating: 2004-09-26
Excellent and fine GUI Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Hi,

This is an excellent and cheap satellite tracking program, very accurate, complete, well designed and very appreciated, including at NASA or USAF, to name some majors users.
It will be very useful to all operators who need to track satellites or drive their antenna on communications or weather satellites.

Nova is able to track - in real-time or simulated - on any satellite knowing its 2 lines elements (TLE), even space probes launched at destination of the outer space if you know their geocentric RA/Dec. In that case you have to enter their coordinates as "extra" satellite.

For global predictions Nova uses a Plan-13 algorithm which is a simplified version of SGP4. This last employs general perturbation theory to provide highly accurate prediction of orbital positions. As the NORAD SGP4/SDP4 algorithm is more time-consuming it should be use only if high accuracy is needed. In the best-cases, using up-to-date Keplerian elements and the SGP4/SDP4 algorithm the accuracy is about 0.1° or 11 km, not very good by astronomical standards but well enough to aim any antenna or scope.

Nova provides various high resolution and colorful views with zoom possibilities : a rectangular map and a space view derived from NOAA 4-km AVHRR land-sea data (~10 km/pixel), an elevation contour, a radar map (in front of stars) and a static sky noise map at 50, 130 and 400 MHz.

Utilities include an scripting screen to automatically manage multiple passes of several satellites, an experimental mode for examining the effects of changes in TLE on satellite orbits, a derived function to examine values such as apogee, perigee, altitude, period, etc, the mutual visibility of two satellites and more.
You can also customize your horizon, telling the program that such azimut is closed up to 30° high for example.

Excepting some planetarium software I reviewed on my site too, this is one of the few satellite tracking software to display the path of satellites in front of the starry sky (view at zenith), a convenient way to wait for their pass near a bright star and why not to picture their trail, this time well framed...
To use properly the map, it must be oriented to the North so that points of the compass are at the right place : the West pointing to the left and the East to the right.
For such occasions, at the request of some amateurs astronomers, a RA/Dec readout of mouse location was added to the radar map. 
In the same ordre of idea, today Nova supports the Meade LX-200 and ETX telescopes, for those who want to visually observe satellites.

However Nova is not able yet to answer the question "what is this satellite crossing near Vega ?" for example, excepting by displaying all satellite trajectories on screen.
According NLSA this kind of features will be included in a forecoming product named Orbital Mechanic. 

Nova runs on Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000 and XP in high resolution.

Hope this helps

73
Thierry
http://www.astrosurf.com/lombry
WA6FWF Rating: 2004-09-24
so so... Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I have used nova for years, it has some bugs that I and others have seen for years.. false antenna stalls, doesnt always park the antennas, the author tends to ignore problems that do not interest him, and as he himself put it some of the updates have been "maybelline" just to make it "look" good... I would rather have it work good.

but all said, its one of the few games in town...

73
Kevin
NE0P Rating: 2003-10-07
Better than Satscape for me Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Nova for windows works fine for me. Yes you have to pay for it, but Satscape is free for obvious reasons-I could never get it to work. On Nova for windows you can automatically download and update Keps by clicking on a single menu item. Tracking is very easy, and you can also easily set up many different views. Wish I could figure out what I did wrong with satscape, but could never get keps in that program.
DL0USB Rating: 2003-10-07
There is a better one for free Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
Nice program but not free and even not so good in our opinion as satscape. Got it only running in demo-mode, i.e. no saving of sat and screen configuration. Heard about a hacked serial but 1. Illegal; 2. Satscape!