The AM Forum

It seemed to be a successful 'Rally !  Many, Many people told me personally how much they were enjoying the event.  My voice started to give out - and that's not easy  ;)

The band wasn't optimal, but it definitely worked.  Worked a lot of LOW POWER (under 25 watts) stations that were FAR FAR away - that was very interesting.  One guy was running his station on solar-power-charged batteries.

Anyway, if you kept a log, using whatever method - by all means, send it in.  If you used Excel - email it, if paper - mail it, and upload your log to the logging server if you used the AMTR logging software  (have already received 21 logs that way, so far!) :D

The results should be very interesting!

Regards,

Steve

Enjoyed the rally Steve.  Thanks for your efforts.  I submitted my log to you as instructed.

I would like to suggest a few changes to the logging program:
  
1. Drop the country column (not needed)
2. Add his/my signal report columns (probably not needed, but nice to have in the  log)    the reports don't have to all be 5-9!  This could be an optional entry.
3. Add a dupe function to screen duplicate contacts.
4. Add a save function so it can be easily saved into your own log file.  (I had to reload the program to restart my log page after I had signed out and back in again).

Just some thoughts.  Thanks again Steve, had a great time.

73,  Jack, W9GT / W9T

So where would you log our Canadians friends in at, Jack?

Which raises another question. Dave, W9A, was IN Mexico operating rmote.
Is his Country entry US or Mexico?? (just kidding)

Hi Jack!

I think we really need that one :-)  The program defaults to US if it's blank.  But, I know (at least last year) some people worked a number of countries, and we should probably have a good way to enter and store them.

Yes!  Some other folks mentioned this as well.  It will be an option in the upcoming release.

Believe me, it's already DONE :-)  I notice it myself after entering about 50 contacts!!

Hmmmmmmm... I don't understand this one.  The program will actually keep 3 copies of the database (2 backups and the active copy), and will automatically look for the database file in whatever directory the program is running in.  The database file is
<stationcall>.txt, so mine is w1e.txt.  This is a plain, delimited text file that can be open in any database application (like Excel, etc.) that will read delimited text files.

Let me know more - I thought I had made the database absolutely foolproof!  You can exit and enter the program countless times and the database, if it's there, should be found and reloaded.  Not only that, the database is actually updated, on disc, after EACH entry, in the event of a power failure, computer failure of other unexpected event.  In this way, not even a single contact will be lost (unless of course you lose your hard drive - can't help that one unless you store your data on a server!).


Same here - it was a really fine time.  Thanks for the feedback - it's needed to improve on what we have!!!!!

Regards,

 Steve

The country info should be obvious from the call sign.  If it is somehow going to be "scored " on the # of countries worked, then that is another matter.  Otherwise, if you want to elaborate, put comments in the notes.  Otherwise, probably just excess info....but, then I guess so is the signal report.

73,  Jack, W9GT

Quote
4. Add a save function so it can be easily saved into your own log file.  (I had to reload the program to restart my log page after I had signed out and back in again).

Hmmmmmmm... I don't understand this one.  The program will actually keep 3 copies of the database (2 backups and the active copy), and will automatically look for the database file in whatever directory the program is running in.  The database file is
<stationcall>.txt, so mine is w1e.txt.  This is a plain, delimited text file that can be open in any database application (like Excel, etc.) that will read delimited text files.

Let me know more - I thought I had made the database absolutely foolproof!  You can exit and enter the program countless times and the database, if it's there, should be found and reloaded.  Not only that, the database is actually updated, on disc, after EACH entry, in the event of a power failure, computer failure of other unexpected event.  In this way, not even a single contact will be lost (unless of course you lose your hard drive - can't help that one unless you store your data on a server!).

This is probably just a format question, Steve.  I’m certainly not an IT person and I can only comment on what I see as compared to other similar applications for logging.   I’m just used to seeing an option on the toolbar/option line to save the entries in a user-assigned file on my computer.  I was able to recover the data by just re-accessing the program…no problem.  I’m not being critical at all, I appreciate your efforts!

73,  Jack, W9GT / W9T

Oh, I get it - DUHHH... Like a "Save As..." function (to save the log as another name)?  Is that what you mean?  Then an "Open..." command would also be in order, if there's a "Save As..."

Let me know !

Thanks and Regards,

Steve

Yes Exactly!  That is what I was trying to say.

Thanks Steve.

73,  Jack, W9GT

Steve, thanks for all your work organizing the Rally and dealing with the sofware, logs etc.   Anything we do away from our own stuff (rigs, antennas, operating...) is extra and much appreciated.

Rob

Steve, I was looking for the log files last night after quitting for the night so I could export them to another computer and email them to you. The machine I was using runs PowerSDR and I mostly keep it isolated from the net. I couldn't find the log files, not knowing where they were stored or what they were called, so an export function like Jack was mentioning was just what I was looking for. In the end I plugged a USB wireless modem into the beast and used the programs own upload function but if that hadn't been an option I'd still be looking for the files to move to a network connected machine. If it's not hard to add, an export function would be nice.

I agree that the RST would be a nice addition and the country column seems useful, especially if we get good conditions on 20 or higher as the sunspots climb over subsequent years.

Still, it was a *great* advantage over paper logging and later transfer. Pretty cool for a contest to have it's own, free, logging program. Thanks!!

Have you got any partial tallies from the 21 logs submitted so far? Any front runners?  ;D

Lots of activity last night. There were still multiple QSOs going at midnight!

All logging programs I'ved used do the country count and assignment automatically by reading the call sign info. This means you would need a lookup table of all the DXCC prefixes. This is probably overkill for the AMTR log. I worked about 6-8 different countries last year, none this year. So, a country field would be sufficient. Or have an "other" entry (like XX) for the state. It would be obvious that it was not a US state, so the program could ID these as DX.

Nice job with the AMTR logging program Steve. It was quick and painless to keep a running log while operating. I liked the tab function for auto-filling the time, frequency (as long as you aren't frequency hopping), and country. I just uploaded my log and it seemed to handle that task successfully.

I'm pretty sure I won and look forward to collecting the Class E rig awarded as first prize. No need to ship it, I can drive up and pick it up. I should be there by around 4 PM today.

Rob

I'm not sure if I successfully uploaded or not. I clicked on the upload button.  It highlighted with the dashed box around the button, but nothing else happened.  Am I supposed to see some kind of feebback to verify that it uploaded?

Great rally!   Thanks for sponsoring....I was signed on to my ISP and hit the AMTR upload button and very quickly saw a small screen confirming that my log has been uploaded to the server....So I'm guessing that's it ???  If so that is a very easy to use and submit log program...I worked Joe,s station in Mexico,,(xe2/w7isj)  from his battery powered beach station in Puerto Penasco and Brian's  station in the Yukon W1LYD/VY1.....Thanks again....Steve KL7OF

..it was fun..no log from me, but spoke with alot of great guys...many new stations herd...

..sk..

Very much enjoyed, thanks to all the stations that was on.  KR4WI Matt

Great Job Steve. Log uploaded a few minutes ago.
Thanks.

You didn't quite get there yet :-)  The software will both tell you it is doing the upload, and then give you a confirmation.  I am REALLY big on software telling you what it's doing.

Try again - might have been a slip of the mouse.  You will certainly know if it worked or not.  All errors are reported.  There is NOTHING WORSE than software that "fails silently" or doesn't tell you it worked.  This software will tell you.

It was fun, but I didn't keep a log. I did get to speak with Kevin, W2E, after Steve left for a cough drop.  ;D

Band was terribly noisy here in the Midwest.

I heard Kerri on 3.878 in spite of SSB'ers giving her trouble. Way to go Kerri. 8)

Phil - AC0OB

At one point it was wall to wall from 3870 to 3890 AM QSO's and Dueling carriers.

It was nice to use your custom log program Steve, thanks. A couple things that I would like to see:

1. Keep the country field, I did work a Canadian station.

2. Enable the use of shift-tab to return to previous fields. I was suprised that it did not work that way. Guess I'm  used to doing it that way.

3. I used more than 1 equipment line up but was not able to make separate entries. I guess I could have tried running 2 copies of the program from different directories. Would that have worked? Then send in multiple logs? Might blow up the server.

.........Larry

Hi Larry,

Will definitely make shift-tab go backwards - that's not a problem at all.  As far as multiple setups - that, I suppose, could be entered in the equipment area - I changed rigs as well, but since both were class E rigs, it didn't change the category!

Multiple logs are not an issue either - the server automatically creates a new version  8)

It still isn't doing anything.  I click on the upload button.  It takes on a shadowy appearance, and a little pop-up box appears with the words "upload to server" but nothing else happens.  If I click anywhere else on the screen the text box goes away, and the button returns to normal.  Nothing to indicate that it is uploading or has uploaded.

I closed and re-opened the program and still the same thing.


Ahh, finally did it.  I clicked on the upload button, and the little textbox appeared as before.  Then I tried clicking again on the textbox itself instead of the upload button, and it worked.

Excellent !  As a curiosity, what are you using for an operating system?  The dialog box behaviour seemed, from what you described, a bit anomalous.

What usually happens, is:

1) you click the "Upload" menu item, and the "Upload Log to Server..." menu appears, and you click that.
2) Assuming you have no errors in your database (if you do, you will be given an opportunity to fix them) - anyway if no errors,
a dialog box will appear asking if you want to upload the log to the logging server.  You click "Yes" (or no if you don't want to).
3) If you click "Yes", the progress of the upload will show up at the top-right of the AMTR Logger main window - connecting, how
many bytes sent, etc.
4) At the end, after the upload is successful and the server acknowledges reciept, another dialog box will pop up telling you everything is completed.

That's the usual behaviour.  Your log was uploaded just fine - so far, we have received 32 logs.  Kerri (KC2UFU) last year's gold medalist has not yet submitted  ;D  We'll see  ;)  There are also a number of others out there, and some folks are emailing Excel files or .CSV files.  Some will probably send hard copy.  Once they are all here, I'll run everything through the data cruncher program I wrote, and we'll see how we did!

My work weekend kept my numbers way down.... only 11 contacts...

I'm actually curious if ANY of those contacts submitted logs!

So far, your call has shown up in 2 logs - K9ACT's and W9HW's logs, but we haven't received all of them yet!

I used my laptop, which has the Windows 7 OS.

When I clicked on the Upload button, the pop-up (completely offset towards the bottom, not overlapping the Upload button) telling me what the button does, appeared, but nothing else happened.  When I tried clicking on the pop-up itself, the "Upload Log to Server..." dialogue box appeared asking if I wanted to upload the log to the logging server, just as you described, and I clicked "yes". I don't recall it giving me any opportunity to correct errors in the data base, but I am not 100% sure on that.

It's probably just me; if some weird, inexplicable technical problem is ever to occur with a computer or piece of radio gear, or a newly-purchased product is likely to have a defect, it seems to inevitably to be me that it happens to.

A case in point is the buffer stage in the transmitter that was going into self-oscillation with the plate voltage turned off at the primary of the plate transformer.

is there a list to see who's log's you have received? would be nice to make sure you did get the ones people sent.

   Steve,

   Waiting for the early log count listing...

Here's the list so far (in no particular order).  I think there are a bunch of other ones out there not sent in yet.

ab4jk
hy7yhy
k4hx
k4kyv
k4xxg
k5d
k9act
k9act
k9do
k9fh
kb1hys
kb3omm
kd3cn
kf5iia
kx5jt
nj2mr
w1aex
w1e
w1ts
w2e
w3gl
w7w
w8l
w9a
w9hw
w9t
wa1lgq
wa2roc
wa9udw
wb4vfn
wf1l
k4hx
k9pnp
n1eu
w5coa
wb9mq

Oh, this would only happen if there were actually an error in the database (usually something like a missing state, etc.).  If none were present, you would not have been asked that question!

Regards,

Steve

What happens to the counting of a contact where the other station did not make or send a log? I got a feeling that is the case with some of the random contacts.

Hey Steve, how about a Linux version next time?  That would be cool............

This is actually the majority of contacts.  For instance, last year we had 400-some individual stations logged, but only 30 people actually sent in logs.  I'm guessing this is probably true for the majority of "contests", although I don't know for sure.

Sometimes, just for the hell of it, I'll jump in during a QuaRMtest and make a few contacts, giving honest signal reports instead of that bogus five-nine and 599 nonsense.  Reportedly, that pisses off serious QuaRMtesters because they have to take the time and trouble to manually enter the signal report into the log.  They are afraid to just let it go and enter the default 5-9/5-9-9 anyway, because the "offending" op just might submit a log and they could be penalised because the log data doesn't match.

As a bonus, some slopbucketeers might get really pissed off as soon as they become aware that I'm running AM, particularly when the QuaRMtest announcement calls it a "SSB contest".  ;D

Thanks Phil!  Takes more than a couple of slop buckets to slow me down.  I worked that frequency for four hours and they thought they were going to push me off it!  No way!

Wow Kerry, that sounds a lot like Astabula Bill!

:O)

"There ain't a slopbucket in North America can bother me!"

Wow, I just ran the preliminary results based on the logs submitted so far - we worked - SO FAR (and more logs are coming, I hope!) - a total of 501 stations on AM.!!!  Last year we had 400-something (I forget the exact number - in the low 400s).

37 logs received so far.  Last year there were 30.

Individual station call counts are up - some stations showed up in 20 logs - and that's a lot!  The most anyone got last year for being logged by others was 11.  All but one of the special event call signs taken out for the rally showed up. 

So, in general, this thing appears to have been a great success.  We all did it, and it was great!

No spoilers on places yet - more logs may yet be on their way  ;)

Hello Steve,

Great job on the logging program.  I intended to just use Excel, but after looking at the program, I opted in too.  I sent two logs for W8K; please ignore the first one and use the last one.  They are identical except for the date/time format.  I normally use yyyymmdd hh:mm but realized you used mmddyyyy...   so I altered my file to be in compliance with what you would expect; did not want to create more work for you! 

I noticed that when I right click on a field in the log entry area it is possible to do cut/paste with the mouse.  I normally like to keep the fingers on the keyboard rather than switching back and forth... I habitually use Alt-E C and Alt-E P for cut and paste, respectively.  Maybe this could be implemented for next-year's version. 

Also, for those that do not use the program, and wish to just use a spreadsheet, perhaps you might make available a boilerplate or template for Excel; this would make for more consistent data formats when you receive them. 

By the way, the two-day format worked out very well for me, even though you will see I had log entries only for Saturday.  I am often bothered by excessive line noise here - Saturday it was clean and a pleasure to operate; even the QRM was minimal!  But Sunday it was atrocious, and I could not operate.  If the rally was one day, Murphy would have made sure I could not participate at all.

Thanks again for all the hard work.  Already looking forward to next year!

73, Rick

Rick said...

" I habitually use Alt-E C and Alt-E P for cut and paste, respectively. "

The normal convention is Cntl-c and Cntl-v !  I'd never heard of Alt-E C and Alt-E P...
What you talking about Willis?

Those paste special formulas or formatting. I think they date back to the chord commands used in Visicalc, the first spreadsheet program for a personal computer.

Received another log today from N2BE so that makes 40.  I *know* there are more out there !!!!  Send 'em in :-)  (HINT!).

So far, up to 504 unique calls logged - higher than last year's total (and getting higher with each log received!) , so that's good !!

I have been off the air for a few months and didn't even operate in the rally this year but my "log" for the past 2 years or so has been scraps of paper with notes jotted on them--not really something to send in.  My guess is, that may be the case for the other stations that have not put in logs.

I know a couple of people who kept logs during the AM Rally did so in a similar manner  ;)  I tried to make it as absolutely easy as possible by writing the logging software (that does a lot for you like fill in the time, frequency and country - you can change any of them).... and then uploads the log to the server.

I also received a couple of paper logs - no biggie, I just typed them into the software, and uploaded them to the server!  Worked like a charm  :D

Steve can you post your latest list of log submitters? I'm wondering if my log made it through.

Thanks, Phil   

have you got many logs sent by regular mail steve? i heard yall having fun over there with ken and kerri.  awesome signal from townsend. i guess kerri delivered her log in person hahaha that is awesome ;D

These are the logs that I've received so far.  I received two logs via paper mail so far - I typed these logs into the logging softare, and they are part of this list.

ab4jk
ab9mq
hy7yhy
k3zrf
k4hx
k4kyv
k4xxg
k5d
k9act
k9do
k9fh
k9pnp
kb1hys
kb3omm
kc2ufu
kd3cn
kf5iia
ks2am
kx5jt
n1eu
n2be
nj2mr
w1aex
w1e
w1ts
w2e
w2phl
w3gl
w5coa
w7w
w8k
w8l
w9a
w9hw
w9t
wa1lgq
wa2roc
wa9udw
wb4vfn
wf1l