07 Jan  2005    News for NTIA/ITS HF Propagation Models (WINDOWS version)

07 Jan  2005   1. Added Method 30 to ICEPAC.  Previously, this was only
                  available for VOACAP.  It performs a Short/Long Method
                  smoothing for paths 7000-10000km.  See the paper
                  written by George Lane under Help/General/Documents.
               1a.If you encounter floating point errors, let me know
                  as I was having some problems until I made some final
                  corrections, but my testing is limited as there is
                  no funding to support this work.

               2. While doing #1 above, I discovered a problem in VOACAP
                  area calculations. The antenna efficiency would have
                  been incorrect since the 24 July 2003 version.
                  This would have caused outputs such as SNR, SNRxx, REL
                  to have been wrong.  This is especially true if you
                  used the SWWHIP.VOA antenna as the receive antenna.

               3. I hope to make a change to REC533 approved by the ITU
                  in the next few weeks before I retire. It will make
                  a slight change in how the operational MUF is calculated.

               4. My retirement is set for 3 Feb 2005. I will continue to
                  be involved with the software from home.