A coverage map answers a practical question: if this site transmits on the chosen band, where does a handheld, a mobile, or another receiver still have a usable signal? It paints the ground around one transmitter. It is a planning picture, not a flight check — walk it before you promise a division a talk path.

Open Analysis → Coverage map (the sections start collapsed so the sidebar stays quiet). Pick the site, the band if the site has more than one, a receiver profile, reliability, radius, detail, and the terrain engine. Handheld at walking height is the hard test for crews on the ground; mobile and aircraft are easier. Start the run. A progress bar sits under the sidebar tabs with percent and a time estimate. Cancel is there if you picked an embarrassing radius, and it asks before it stops.

You can leave the page. The job keeps going. Come back to Mapping and it picks up. You can queue another coverage without killing the one that is running; they take turns. Longer runs can email you when they finish, with a map attachment when one can be built. Cancelled or failed jobs stay quiet.

Finished runs land under Results. Coverage is not painted automatically every time you open the map — that would make a busy incident crawl. Open a result, or use Show all on map. Several runs for the same site can stay loaded so you can compare engines or settings. Older maps still display when the picture is usable.

Settings that change the picture

Terrain engine is the big fork. Slower — Higher Accuracy (ITM) is the default and the one to use when you want a Radio Mobile–style planning map. Faster — Generalized (Deygout) is for sketches and comparing pads quickly. Links always use ITM. Reading RF results talks through why they disagree.

Reliability (conservative 95%, standard 90%, optimistic 80%) tightens or loosens the fringe. Radius defaults to a wide planning circle and has a hard cap; bigger areas take longer. Detail defaults to Standard. Finer detail is sharper and slower — use it when you are arguing about a ridge, not when you are briefing in ten minutes. Receive quality on the form comes from the site (threshold, fade target, line loss) and can be edited for this run without rewriting the site.

Reading the colors

Paint is available fade — how much signal sits above the receiver threshold — for both engines. The vertical dBm key on the map is the same scale. Green is comfortable (about 10 dB of fade and up). Yellow and amber are weak but still above threshold. That 10 dB is a planning comfort target, not a paint cutoff. Below threshold is purple by default; click the key for clear mode, which keeps a light fringe tint for a few dB under the white tick (~−116 dBm at the default 0.5 μV threshold), then goes blank for true dead zones. Smooth blends cells; Solid shows the hard edges. Click the shade for exact μV, dBm, S-unit, and field strength (Smooth inspect blends neighboring cells to match the paint). Coverage only samples each cell center — Standard is about 250 m across, so a knife-edge ridge can look dead on the map while a Point check a hundred metres away still copies. Use Point check for a precise pin, or re-run High / Maximum when you need the shade to catch that pocket. The Accuracy button under the key is the short version of why another product’s map may look bigger. Turn on 3D and the same shade drapes on the hills — Solid / Smooth and the key still apply. Click-inspect stays on the flat map, so tap 3D again if you need the cell readout.

With two or more site maps loaded, Overlays can Build combined coverage — strongest signal wins at each spot. Building it hides the individual shades so you see the union first; turn sites back on if you want them stacked. Combined coverage can also go in the Compare swipe and in the export picker.

Related: Links, point checks, and routes · Results and export