My satellite tracking started with PC-Track, by Thomas Johnson (Sp) before
the advent of Internet and this program had a valuable display which showed
satellites in real time overhead. The centre of the display was where I was
located. Unfortunately, since the program was for early DOS, it became
outdated.

My current satellite observations are basically ad hoc. I do it when the
desire overtakes me.

I use two satellite tracking programs which are totally free. Satscape and
Orbitron, the latter having a very valuable overhead display, referred to as
a Radar Screen - similar to the one as mentioned in PC track.

I am not in the least interested in those small-size satellite tracking
programs which are either DOS based or require the manual insertion of TLE's
or other data.

In addition, I have found that most of the more commercial programs are
not very good for my requirements. IMHO, The irony being that Satscape and
Orbitron beats the pants off most of them.

I should mention that the two programs I have mentioned have prediction
capabilities which can be saved as text files.

It surprises me somewhat that a few satellite tracking guru's websites
feature links to archaic/unwieldy satellite tracking applications such as
Traksat and STSplus to the detriment of Satscape and Orbitron. Such programs
were good in their day.

With the two programs I have mentioned, updating elements is a breeze and is
done whilst connected to the net.

Computer time can also be synchronised, imperative for viewing satellites.


"Allison Kirkpatrick" wrote in message
om...
How do you go about planning for a "session" of satellite observing? I
understand how to come up with pass predictions for any satellite
using software, online services like Heavens Above, etc., but I do not
know how to "choose" satellites without it being laborious. For
example, I just spent an hour or so typing in "Lacrosse 2", "Lacrosse
3", etc. at the Heavens Above web site to see what interesting
satellites might be visible the next night or two from my location,
but I found very few passes. This seems like a very inefficient way to
go about planning, so what do you guys do? Do you pick out the
interesting satellites, calculate when they will make favorable passes
many days in advance, and then mark those on a calendar of some sort?
Is there some software that you can use to do this? Thanks very much
for your help.