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Reviews For: Grayzone by ON5AU

Category: Ham Software/Apps - Other than logging

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Review Summary For : Grayzone by ON5AU
Reviews: 2MSRP: $39
Description:
Grayzone is a program targetted at low band DX'ers who want to calculate the grayline for their location.
Product is in production
More Info: http://users.skynet.be/on5au/
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0022
ON4WTN Rating: 2007-01-26
A tool that I was missing Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
It is true if you expect to have a CD-ROM with almost photos of the grayline taken from space that it is most likely a disappointment and that the startup screen is perhaps misleading in that view. But photos off the grayline are in fact useless for determining exactly the right worldwide locations and times for propagation purpose. Then you need total worldwide maps indicating the grayzone and additional exact sunrise-sunset time tables often within a range off a few minutes.
Since I have the CD-ROM I could add two 80 meters and one 160 meters on my DXCC list, and I know more precisely when to listen.
For a more in depth review of the merits of this product, one
might want to read LB Cebik's (W4RNL) review at:
http://www.antennex.com/w4rnl/Jan607/on5au.html "
73, Mike
N1LF Rating: 2006-12-11
Better tools available for free Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
At the risk of insulting one of the best DX'ers on the "Gentleman's Band", I really must advise other amateurs not to purchase "Grayzone" by ON5AU, distrubted in the US on the popular site AntennaX.

Looking at the web site, you see a beautiful picture of the terminator between darkness and light passing over the earth. This photograph is reproduced with this listing above. This might lead you to believe that you're going to receive beautiful full color animated displays of the Grayline terminator---but alas, you're not.

The software actually includes largely text based information and a series of black and white PDF files that show where the terminator is on any given day and hour.

There are clearly superior, easy to understand visulizations of the grayline out there---even some web based versions. And they cost a fraction of the $39 dollars US that this software costs.

In fairness, the software package also includes the "HamClock" software that converts your local time into UTC and can compute the local time of the station that you're in QSO with.

It also includes a piece of software that will provide the Madienhead locator for any lat/long in the world. But then again, you can do that on Google Earth with better results.

A poor effort, and hopelessly outdated. If this software had been available ten years ago, low band DX'ers would have raved over...but in late 2006, it seems hopelessly out of date.

Avoid this one.