Hi folks,

Something of great significance to observers of artificial
satellites: for almost two years, getting current elements has been
a problem. The US Government, as part of the "war on terror",
instituted restrictions on our ability to download the elements. One
could still do so, going through http://www.space-track.org . But
the simple "click to get elements" scheme in Guide no longer worked.

It appears the restrictions have been loosened; at least three
sites now host satellite orbital elements, and Guide can access
them. If you download this file to your Guide folder (about 4 KBytes):

http://www.projectpluto.com/tle.hee

and then run Guide and click on Settings... TLE=, you will find
links that will automatically get current elements for the full list
of about 9000 objects, as well as various smaller lists that will
satisfy most people's needs. (These come from the site
http://www.tle.info/data .)

You can do this if you're running any version of the Guide software
dated 2 October 2004 or later.

-- Bill