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The analysis views
Two of the three are drawn from satellite positions, and the sky view's summary line says where those came from — 34 of 38 satellites shown · navigation file, 3 h old. Its colour is the judgement: green means a real orbit source, amber means this phone's own receiver, red means an imported file too old to use. Tapping the line opens Satellite orbits.
Tap Analysis on the bar at the bottom of the station screen. Three views, chosen by the tabs at the top or by swiping between them; ← returns to the station.
In the free edition these show what the station check captured, held after the run ends.
Pro adds two more tabs after these three: Self-position — where the station's own observations put it — and Reference position — where a service's reference position stands relative to you, and where it has been (Network-RTK check).
Where the satellites are, by constellation. The header names the source of the positions, which matters more than it looks:
| It says | Where the positions came from |
|---|---|
| the station's own stream | The station broadcasts its orbits alongside its observations. The best case: current, and exactly the satellites it serves |
| navigation file | The RINEX file you imported |
| phone GNSS | Your handset's own receiver, for satellites nothing else could place |
A satellite with no known orbit is not drawn. It is counted, and the line under the plot says how many were left out. Drawing it at 0,0 would put it on the horizon due north, and the plot cannot tell that from a fact.
The count reads, for example, "41 of 41 satellites shown" — the second number is what the stream carries, the first what could be placed.
Pro draws where each satellite has been: one point a minute, in the constellation's own colour lightened so the history does not compete with the live marker. A day is kept per satellite, and a trail breaks rather than joins across a gap — a satellite that set and rose again is two arcs, not a line across the plot.
They answer a question one epoch cannot: is this station's horizon clear? A session's worth of arcs that all stop at 20 degrees in the south-west is the shape of something standing there.
Trails are kept for the run, not for the screen: they go on filling while the phone is in a pocket, and rotating it does not start them over. They are cleared when the next run begins, because they describe one capture. How long a capture can run is on the Watch mode page.
The free edition draws the satellites without trails.
One bar per satellite, coloured by constellation, with the mean and range in the header.
The mean is averaged in power, not in decibels. Averaging dB overstates by roughly 2 dB, which is the difference between a station that passes check 6 and one that does not.
The antenna's own signature. A healthy installation climbs smoothly from roughly 35 dB-Hz at the horizon to about 50 at zenith.
- A flat curve suggests the antenna, its siting, or the cable.
- A dent at one bearing is usually an obstruction.
- Marks are shaded by how often that combination occurred, so a cell hit a thousand times reads darker than one hit once.
The plot covers one run: starting a new check clears it, so two stations are never drawn on top of each other.
The station's message format sets the resolution of these plots. C/N0 is carried differently by different message types:
| Messages | Resolution |
|---|---|
| MSM4, MSM5 | whole dB-Hz |
| MSM6, MSM7 | a sixteenth of a dB-Hz |
| 1002/1004, 1010/1012 (legacy) | a quarter of a dB-Hz |
| MSM1–3 | none at all |
So an MSM7 station's plot looks denser than an MSM4 station's, and neither is more correct — read the shape of the curve, not the number of marks. On a station sending MSM1, 2 or 3, both C/N0 views are empty because the stream carries no signal strength, and check 6 says so.
⋮ → Import navigation file takes a RINEX 3 navigation file, plain or
.gz. The app tells you how many records it accepted, or why it could
not use the file — a file that turns out to be the wrong one never
replaces the one that was working.
The app never downloads one. The file comes from a data provider whose terms are between you and them.