VOACAP & VOAAREA plot colors

VOACAP Quick Guide: Home

 

There are two definition files, located in the default installation at C:\itshfbc\database\, that define the plot colors for VOACAP graphs and VOAAREA coverage maps as follows: 

COLORS   GPH	Colors for auto contour shading for Point-to-Point plots
COLORS   CON	Colors for auto contour shading for Area Coverage plots

Point-to-Point Plots

Colors.gph - original

    8    7    1    2    3   15       Color indexes
    1    4    6   56   58   59       Black/White shade codes
 dark grey  red gren yell whit
 grey

This controls the colors used for Point-to-Point graph shading.
On the first line, place 6 colors used for auto shading.
On the 2nd line, place the shading codes to be used for black/white shading.
The right-most value corresponds to the highest value shaded.
Below is a list of the value colors that may be used.
Using an invalid color value will cause the default values to be used.

    0=Black     4=Blue       8=Dark grey    12=Lite blue
    1=Red       5=Magenta    9=Orange       13=Pink
    2=Green     6=Cyan      10=Lite green   14=Pale blue
    3=Yellow    7=Grey      11=Brown        15=White

For point-to-point graphs we could use the following color scale (originally suggested by Dan AC6LA at http://www.qsl.net/ac6la/mapcontrol.html) [from highest to lowest value]: 

Red, Orange, Yellow, Light Green, Pale Blue, Grey.

For the color abbreviations, see file COLORS.WIN in the same DATABASE directory. Subsequently, you would change the first line of COLORS.GPH to: 

    7   14   10    3    9    1       Color indexes

Now these 6 colors are always automatically selected for graphs.

We will now change the Area Coverage colors accordingly:

Area Coverage Plots

Colors.con - original

   15    7    6   14    2    3    9
 whit grey cyan pale  grn yell orng
                blue

This controls the colors used for auto contour shading.
On the first line, place 7 colors used for auto shading.
The right-most value corresponds to the highest value shaded.
Below is a list of the value colors that may be used.
Using an invalid color value will cause the default values to be used.

    0=Black     4=Blue       8=Dark grey    12=Lite blue
    1=Red       5=Magenta    9=Orange       13=Pink
    2=Green     6=Cyan      10=Lite green   14=Pale blue
    3=Yellow    7=Grey      11=Brown        15=White

Let us use the color scale suggested by Dan AC6LA (from highest to lowest value): 

Red, Orange, Yellow, Light Green, Pale Blue, Magenta, Grey.

Subsequently, you would change the two first lines of COLORS.CON to: 

    7    5   14   10    3    9    1
 grey magn llbl lgrn yell orng  red

Now these 7 colors are always automatically selected for Area Coverage plots, so no laborous manual color definitions while plotting are needed from our part.

And while using the VOAAREA program, my settings under the LAYERS button are: