We present the results of an innovative and powerful new technique to be used in the interpretation of Geotail plasma wave data when the spacecraft is in the deep magnetotail during potential reconnection events. To provide the best possible magnetotail structure of magnetic fields and plasma densities, an MHD simulation is performed. At precisely the moment of reconnection, during the simulation, the magnetotail structure is used in the ray tracing calculations of various plasma waves expected to be generated in the X point region. Several wave modes are studied in detail (L mode ion cyclotron, R mode ion cyclotron, lower hybrid waves, whistler mode waves, and L-O and R-X mode waves). Ray tracing calculations are performed in these modes as generated from a point source at all wave normal angles in the reconnection region. When we assume each ray is generated at the same intensity, a ray density distribution is derived for the entire spatial reconnection region for several frequencies that each of the plasma wave modes can support in the MHD magnetotail model. As a hypothetical spacecraft transverses the tail reconnection structure along a typical trajectory, a pseudofrequency time spectrogram can then be constructed. It is clear that each of these wave modes has a distinctive pattern of propagation, along the magnetic field, transverse to the magnetic field, or trapped within the resulting plasmoid or reconnection region and should be easily distinguished in Geotail measurements. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1993