Ron wrote : >Ok folks..here is a possible new format for the Iridium reports along >with most of the reports to date in order. thanks a lot Ron for gathering all info. My very personal comments : >1) NORAD: NORAD number. I prefer this compared to the COSPAR because my >tracking programs use that or the name....not COSPAR. If the combined mine uses COSPAR...., I (and most members of the BWGS I guess) have been using COSPAR for whole our life (that is during the ten years since I started with satellites). For most of the flashers in our program I know the COSPAR ID by head, only for MIR I remember NORAD is 16609. >from a 5 space NORAD to 8 space COSPAR requires reducing 3 spaces. I In practice we could use a 6 character COSPAR-like : 97-30A or even the Iridium number e.g. 23 (2 characters). To be honest, I think we shouldn't start with Iridiumnumbers, because these are not present in orbital elements. Seems we will need both to satisfy everybody. >2) Date: May need to change to yymmdd format...with or without the "-" As mentioned by Bram before, in our PPAS we use yy-mm-dd. Together with time hh:mm:ss the year->month->day->hour->minute->second sequence sounds the most logical way of ordering to me. >6) eI: Elevation of max flare point..also called Altitude by some According to a previous discussion on this list Altitude was the 'correct' one, although my prediction program isn't using it... >13) Mag: Magnitude of max flare. Personally I think to whole magnitude is >good enough. May have to if the extra digits are needed for other changes. I agree. >12) Obs: Observer initials. Now two spaces to save space. As I have a whole bunch of observing locations - depending on how far I want to drive from this light polluted city - I propose two spaces for the initials plus a digit indicating the observing place : KJ1 : observing place one KJ2 : ... two with coordinates specified at the end of the list (see previous list) This will only fit in a 80 characterline I guess... Greetings, Kurt J