WebProp

If you have a ham radio website then WebProp enables you to show the latest HF propagation conditions and forecast to your visitors. It's not the only gadget like this around, but I didn't like the look of any of the others, so I decided to make my own.

To add a propagation forecast box like the one above to your website, just copy the following code and paste it into your web page using a plain text editor:

<div align="center">
  <iframe src="http://www.g4ilo.com/wwv/webprop.php"
    width="540px" height="104px" frameborder="0"
     scrolling="no" allowtransparency="true"></iframe>
</div>

That's all there is to it! The data is automatically updated whenever a visitor loads your web page.

Note: You must use a plain text editor like Notepad to paste the code into the HTML code of your web page. If you use a visual editor like FrontPage it will think that you want this code to appear in your web page, and it will change the formatting so that it is not interpreted as HTML code.

Small version

You can also have a small version of the forecast box like this, which is ideal for including in a side menu bar or other situation where space is at a premium.

To add this version, copy and paste the following code into your web page:

<div align="center">
  <iframe src="http://www.g4ilo.com/wwv/webprop.php?format=small"
    width="180px" height="268px" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"
    allowtransparency="true"></iframe>
</div>

Due to the different sizes of fonts used by different browsers, the WebProp box might not display at exactly the same size in all cases. If you see a vertical scroll bar when the box is displayed, make sure the scrolling="no" attribute is present. You can also try playing with the height and width values.

Changing the colours

You can change the colours of the title bar, background and border, by specifying some additional values after .../webprop.php. You can specify the background colour using bg=colour, the title bar colour using hd=colour, and the border colour using bd=colour.

If your web pages have a non-white background, then you may notice a white border surrounding the propagation box. You can specify the matching colour to fill this border using fb=colour. However the allowtransparency=true in the iframe tag, as in the examples above, should resolve this issue.

When specifying values to a web program, the first value is preceded by a question mark and subsequent values are separated by ampersands (which are normally encoded as &). In the small version of the propagation box shown above, we must specify a value format=small, and you can see this is preceded by a question mark.

Changing the iframe src= value to: .../webprop.php?bg=yellow&hd=%2300A000&bd=black&fb=%23f8f8f8 will create the box shown below.

Colours are specified using names (black, blue, green, etc.) or using hexadecimal RGB values like #DDFFEE. There are numerous software utilities available that will help you determine colour values. Note that if you want to specify hexadecimal colour values, you must replace the # by %23 because # is not an allowed character in a URL.

Band conditions

WebProp gets the current solar weather data from the Geophysical Alert message put out every three hours by WWV. The latest sunspot number is obtained from the Daily Solar Data file. These files are polled regularly for updates, and the results are stored on the g4ilo.com web server.

The band condition indicators are calculated from these solar indices, to give an indication of conditions on LF (<10MHz), MF (10 - 20MHz) and HF (>20MHz). Band conditions are shown using a scale that runs: Excellent, Good, Normal, Fair, Poor and Very Poor.

The ionosphere does not always behave as expected and so the band condition indicators are not always accurate. If you would prefer to display a version of WebProp that shows only a summary of the WWV data and not the band condition indicators, this may be achieved by adding the parameter "condx=no" to the WebProp URL.

The example above was created by inserting the following code:

<div align="center">
  <iframe src="http://www.g4ilo.com/wwv/webprop.php?condx=no
    &amp;bg=%23FFFF73&amp;hd=%23FFFF00&amp;bd=%23A6A600"
    width="540px" height="80px" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"
    allowtransparency="true"></iframe>
</div>

You can also have a small version without the band conditions like the one in the left hand column of the home page. The code below uses the default colours:

<div align="center">
  <iframe src="http://www.g4ilo.com/wwv/webprop.php?format=small&amp;condx=no"
     width="180px" height="200px" scrolling="no" frameborder="0"
     allowtransparency="true"></iframe>
</div>

WebProp in other formats

I sometimes receive requests to have WebProp in another format, with a different layout or not in an iframe. WebProp is currently only available in an iframe and the only customization options are those that have been described.