BBS SATELLITE SCHEDULE MANUAL
This  is a program intended for those BBS operators who have  the 
ability  to run jobs through a shell escape at the  direction  of 
(say) the forward.tnc file (or whatever it is called these days).  
Understand that you need to know nothing about satellites to  run 
this program.  The utilities take care of all that for you. There 
are four files you need to run this utility.

QTHBBS   This is an ascii file that tells the computer what  your
latitude,  longitude,  height  above sea  level  in  meters,  the 
current year, your time zone, full  path name  to the file  where 
you wish to have the bbsked  written  and the number of days  you 
wish the program to search for passes.

KEPC.DAT   This  is  the file where the  keplerian  elements  are 
stored for the programs use.

KEPLER.COM   This is a utility written by WB2MNF that  takes  the 
AMSAT  keplerian  bulletins and turns them into a  file  that  is 
readable by quiktrak 3.0+ and quikbbs.

QUIKBBS.EXE  This is the schedule algorithm written by N4HY

QTHBBS has its data entered in exactly the order described above.

One  item per line makes it easy to read but a space is all  that 
is needed between the items is you wish.  This will NOT save  you 
disk  space.  On a hard disk you are going to give this guy  1024 
bytes  of storage any way you look at it.  SO enter them so  they 
are easy to read.  The timezone is simpliicity itself.  Enter the 
name  of  the zone (three letters) and the offset.  THIS  IS  THE 
TIME  ZONE YOUR COMPUTER USES.  If you use UTC put UTC0.  If  you 
are  on  Eastern  Daylight time put  EDT4.  If  you  use  Pacific 
Standard time put PST8, etc.

KEPC.DAT is also in ascii.  I will not explain why these  numbers 
are here.  This program with KEPLER.COM utility assures that  you 
have  to no absolutely NOTHING about satellites etc. in order  to 
run this program.

KEPLER.COM  makes a keplerian file out of the AMSAT  distribution 
that  is posted to CIS every week.  Nice JOB JON!  When  you  run 
the program, you will be asked for the name of the input file and 
the  name  of  the output file.  YOU MUST make  the  output  file 
kepc.dat    Name the input file whatever you call the file  where 
the  weekly keps bulletin is stored on your computer.  You  don't 
have to remove any extra lines it will ignore them.
Eric  WA6YBT has uploaded a file with the frequencies of all  the 
satellites  in  the AMATEUR satellite service that are  at  least 
semi-active  to very active.  It is amazingly easy to  listen  to 
say  OSCAR-11.  You can hear it on a handi-talkie with  a  rubber 
duck.  You won't copy data at the quieting such a setup will give 
you but you CAN hear it.

CAVEAT!  The year in the QTHBBS file MUST correspond to the  year
given  on  the keplerian element  set because of  a computational
chosen by WB2MNF in KEPLER.COM  This will cause care to be  taken
near the end of each year.  Just wait until  all the  new element
sets are  out for that year and change the year in QTHBBS  to the
new year and then run KEPLER.COM on the AMSAT file.

Happy Satellite Hunting!  de Bob N4HY