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Horizon Distance
An brief exploration into line-of-sight distance limitations.
Asking ChatGPT to plot the data
ChatGPT generated graph
The tables below show height vs horizon distance. Recall that horizon distance is half the communication distance if both parties are at the same elevation.
+---------------+--------------------+
| height_meters | horizon_kilometers |
+---------------+--------------------+
| 2 | 5.05 |
| 5 | 7.98 |
| 10 | 11.29 |
| 20 | 15.96 |
| 100 | 35.70 |
| 500 | 79.82 |
| 1000 | 112.88 |
| 2500 | 178.50 |
| 5000 | 252.46 |
| 7500 | 309.23 |
| 10000 | 357.10 |
+---------------+--------------------+
+-------------+---------------+
| height_feet | horizon_miles |
+-------------+---------------+
| 5 | 2.74 |
| 10 | 3.87 |
| 50 | 8.66 |
| 100 | 12.25 |
| 500 | 27.38 |
| 1000 | 38.72 |
| 2000 | 54.76 |
| 4000 | 77.45 |
| 8000 | 109.54 |
| 10000 | 122.47 |
| 20000 | 173.22 |
| 30000 | 212.17 |
+-------------+---------------+
Here is the script used to generate the above tables.