Tag Archives: HRD

WordPress Plugin HRD Logbook Online

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Some regular visitors of this blog know I’m working on a WordPress Plugin to show your HRD Logbook online. Finally version 1.0 is out now. A brand new page on this blog is dedicated to the plugin. It is a typical 1.0-version so no bells and whistles yet. Just put the php-file in your plugin dir and enable it on your pluginpage.

On the wish list:

- adding visitors interaction with selecting periods, search for call etc.
- adding admin-panel to alter layout and columns;
- adding a log-entry on admin-panel for web entry of qso’s;
- adding the plugin to the central WP-plugin directory.

If you have feature requests, please post them as a comment or mail me from the contactpage. I promise I’ll take a look at it and see if I be able to integrate it in the code.

HRD on a Mac

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Last evening I was thinking about buying a copy of VMware Fusion. I’ve used VMware Fusion trial to create a vm for hacking the bootROM of a Sun Cobalt RaQ550 three weeks ago. When I was using VMware Fusion I noticed it had seen my Boot Camp partition on my Mac with Windows XP for ham software that only runs on Windows. I enjoyed the fact that I was able to boot my Boot Camp partition in a virtual machine. But I still had to switch to my vm to use Ham Radio Deluxe.
Last week my VMware Fusion was running out of trial and I got the option to buy the software. But 80 euro’s was a little overpriced for me. So I waited. And the waiting did pay off, because yesterday I got the offer to buy the soft for 49 euro’s!
But the best has yet to come: when I entered the bought serial, I got also a new option: Unity. When I started the Boot Camp vm, I start HRD and click on Unity. Now HRD appears in my Mac desktop as a normal application! Absolutely awesome! This is what I wanted! Thank you guys of VMware, you make great software!

Filter cluster spots on region

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Ham Radio Deluxe has a pretty cool feature where you can logon to a DX-cluster and the spots from the cluster are presented on a band scale just beside your logbook. This way you can see in one glans what stations are on the band. If you click on the call in the scale, your radio automatically tunes to that frequency and if you have your add-screen open, the call will be polled from QRZ.com.
Very handy indeed! But I missed out on something. Before I became using the telnetcluster option in HRD I always had DXwatch open to look for good DX-stations (and sometimes I still have to see the overall activity on the HF-bands). A really neath feature of DXwatch is you can filter on spotters. For instance: it’s not really handy to be informed about a contact between a amateur in the US and an amateur in Japan when you’re located in Europe (like I am). Little change I’ll be able to hear both/one of these stations. On the other hand: I would really want to know about all the qso’s between amateurs in my region (region 14) and anyone outside that region. On DXwatch you simply make a filter to only show spotters from region 14 and voila! You’ve a pretty good change to hear all the stations who are spotted!
I really missed that feature in HRD so I went asking around. Nobody really had a clue how to do this. One colleague-amateur advised me to install VE7CC-1 CC Cluster software. This program connects to the telnetcluster and HRD connects to the program. I’ve tried it, incredible complicated, didn’t make any sense to me, couldn’t even get it running. I think it’s a little overblown for only filter spotters.
Then I started to read about telnetcluster software. I know little to nothing about these services but maybe it is possible to fix something there. And what turned out? It’s possible! Just hit the [Show] button in the DX Cluster window in HRD Logbook when you’re logged in a telnetcluster and hit [Console]. Now you can enter commands to the cluster. Just enter: “accept/spots by_zone 14″ and hit enter. Now this filter will be saved on that particular telnetcluster for you. If you login next time, the filter still wil be active. If you want to know what filter is in use, just enter: “sh/filter’ and hit enter. The cluster will tell you what filters are active.

Another great link is this one.

I hope I helped more amateurs out there with this, don’t think I’m the only newbie with telnet clusters. At least I didn’t found a lot of hints and tricks on Google…

HRD Logbook online

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As I wrote before: I’ve managed to store my HRD-logbook on a online MySQL database. My plan is to show my logbook live at the logbook-url of this very site. I’ve wrote a little PHP to be able to do this. So from now on you can take a look at my logbook live! Any changes will be online immediately.
On my wish-list is a search option to look for your own call in my logbook and be able to select one year of QSO’s.

Enjoy!

HRD and MySQL

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Reading this article of KB3LMC got my mind spinning. I hate the fact that HRD puts it database on my local computer. I switch computers a lot and it would be great if I could use some sort of central database for all my HRD instances.
Second thing is: I really would love to be able to show my log realtime here on my blog. I use Hamlog.eu for that now, but I don’t like it. I’ve to upload my logbook to that site from time to time and that is to much hassle. It would be perfect to let the webserver read the online database so I never have to upload anything.

The database is already up and running (took me only a half hour or so) and the HRD instances are talking to it (at least one for now). So that’s cool. Now I have to write a plugin for WordPress to be able to show the log online. It would also be handy if the plugin lets the visitor of my site search the database for his/her call. Hmmm, no experience with writing WordPress plugins….. Gonna be interesting.

PACC 2010 coming up

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With the PACC 2010 coming up, I’m getting all jumpy to get my “ultimate contest setup” complete. My plans are to participate in the PACC this year from our club location NERA. Last year I’ve take a look and made a few QSO’s from that location and it is fantastic to operate from there. Far from the inhabited world there is zero QRM. Very nice when you sometimes have to pick up weak signals.
The idea now is to setup my Kenwood TS-850SAT at this location. The TS-850 has a build in voice keyer, but this keyer is not able to repeat the message with an adjustable delay. So I’ll use my own homebrew voice keyer. I already tested with success my headset. It works fine, so now I only have to find a decent foot pedal to switch between receiving and transmitting. Of course I can buy a foot pedal in an instrument shop or something like that. But that is expensive and less fun. So I searching for a solution for that.
Then I’ve hands free for logging. I think I bring my MSI netbook with me for logging. Only thing is I have to find a good contestlogging program. My main rig controller is Ham Radio Deluxe, but that is not quite feasible for contest logging. N1MM makes Windows crashing when it interacts thru the Keyspan USA-19H USB-RS232-adapter to my rig. So that doesn’t seem a solution. I already take a look at many logging programs, but they are all so old and ugly and don’t do rig control (which I want for logging the complete QSO). So I didn’t figure out that one yet.
If you have any good suggestions, please send me a message!

Icom IC-756PRO-3, Signalink & Ham Radio Deluxe

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Last weekend I offered a friend of mine, Fred PA3YH, some help with his shack setup. He owns a Icom IC-756PRO-3 radio. Since a few months he bought a Signalink USB and works all different digital modes with it. Actually this combination works really well! He is doing great in QSO’s! The only thing missing was a good logbook. He did connect the rig via the Signalink to his laptop, but didn’t yet use rig control (Cat-V).

So these two things I want to help him with. First, rig control. Fred did already bought a cable for rig control. It is a USB – ACC-connector cable. After installing the driver for the cable, the laptop did see an extra com-port. Now download and fire up the latest copy of Ham Radio Deluxe. No problems so far. Imported his logbook from LogPA (his current log program). Also no problems. What surprised me was the super duper integration of HRD with the radio. I myself do not yet have a Signalink, but men what cool features do you have then! You are able to record sound of the rig, almost all options are controllable from the program.
Also figure out for him how to let Windows use the internal sound card and let the HAM-programs use the Signalink. I wasn’t able to fully test his new setup because he pushed me out of the way, that enthusiastic he was! ;-)
The cool thing about this new setup for Fred is that he makes enough time to investigate all the options and tricks. Hopefully I can benefit too from his investigation ;-)