📡 Getting Started

1. Add nodes — right-click anywhere on the map → "Add node here". Each node is a transmitter or receiver. Click the ◎ button to centre on your current location first.
2. Set antenna height — in the sidebar, edit each node's ANT HT (metres above ground). Tweak the colour swatch to recolour a node; the ▾ chevron collapses a card.
3. Link nodes — right-click a node marker → "Connect to …" to add a radio link. Right-click a link to hide, isolate, or delete it. Each link becomes its own path; use + NEW PATH to chain several into a multi-hop route.
4. Pick a band — open ⚙ SETTINGS and choose a radio preset (Meshtastic AU 915 MHz by default) or enter a custom frequency; TX/gain/RX/margin live here too.
5. Analyse — click ▶ ANALYSE (bottom of the sidebar). Terrain is fetched along each link and the line-of-sight + 1st Fresnel zone are drawn below the map.
6. Coverage — tick the COVERAGE box on a node and click COMPUTE (or COMPUTE ALL in Settings). A terrain-aware coverage area is drawn in that node's colour.

✓ CLEAR — LOS clear and Fresnel meets preset threshold (40 % for Meshtastic/ham, 60 % for Wi-Fi).  ⚠ MARGINAL — LOS clear but the 1st Fresnel zone is obstructed below the preset threshold. Each link result shows the estimated knife-edge diffraction loss (Diff) in dB.  ✕ BLOCKED — terrain crosses the line of sight.

HOW COVERAGE IS CALCULATED

From each node, rays are swept in every direction (1° steps by default) and terrain is sampled every ~40 m out to the smaller of the free-space link budget or the Search cap. A point is covered when (a) the terrain doesn't cross the optical line of sight and (b) the link budget still closes after free-space loss and knife-edge diffraction. Fill is shown in the node's colour: more opaque = stronger margin, fading to the edge; areas with no usable link (terrain shadow) are left blank, and the thin outline marks the farthest reach per direction. Rays and Samples in Settings trade speed for smoothness/accuracy.

SURFACE CLUTTER (OPTIONAL)

Bare terrain misses trees and buildings. Tick Surface clutter in Settings to add canopy/land-cover obstruction: measured tree heights (Meta/WRI via Global Forest Watch) over forest, plus ESA WorldCover land cover (Terrascope). Clutter doesn't hard-block like terrain — it adds frequency-scaled diffraction loss (set by Atten @915, dB/m) as the path grazes through it. The Clear < radius keeps clutter from blocking your own mast. First compute is slower while the data loads.

SUN & SHADE (SOLAR EXPOSURE)

Right-click a node → ⓘ More info… to open the node panel. Alongside the facts and link list it scans the skyline in every direction (terrain out to 30 km, surface clutter out to 5 km) and traces the sun's daily arc across it — handy for siting a solar panel or checking when a mast clears the trees.

• Panorama — the horizon as seen from the node: dark = terrain, coloured = canopy/buildings, the gold curve is the sun's path for the chosen date (hour ticks + sunrise/sunset marked). Drag sideways to pan the full 360°.
• Sky dome — looking straight up: centre = overhead, rim = horizon. Green is sky blocked by the skyline, dark is open sky, the dot is the sun.
• Status line — whether the node is in direct sun or shaded right now (and whether terrain or canopy is the culprit), plus the day's total: direct sun X of Y daylight (NN %). An under canopy warning shows if the eye point sits below the tree layer.
• Controls — Date picks the day; the time slider scrubs minute-by-minute; Clutter toggles whether canopy/buildings count toward shading; Eye m is the observer height above ground (defaults to the antenna height — drop it to ~2 m to check a person or a roof panel).

Solar position uses the NOAA low-precision model (~0.01° accuracy); sunlight is treated as a straight ray (no atmospheric refraction), so times near the horizon are approximate.

Tips: terrain is AWS Open Terrain Tiles (~30 m, no key, cached in memory). Open 🐛 LOG to see exactly what each calculation used — link budgets, clutter loading, and per-link results. Use ⇪ SHARE to copy a URL containing your full setup. Modelling is first-order (single knife-edge diffraction, 4/3-earth) — for engineered links verify with a full Longley-Rice/ITWOM tool.

📡 Share This Map

📥 Load a Shared Map

Paste a ClearPath link someone sent you. Loading replaces the current map.

Build Path

⚙ RF + Coverage Settings