Although a number of log search utilities exist that are able to provide the important functionality of finding out whether you are "in the log" well, I wondered whether any improvements/interactivity would enrich the experience for dxers. I also wanted to create a way of facilitating log uploads to the log search server as well as optimising the transfer of logs using unreliable and expensive satellite  phones.

 

I created the 5B4WN log search utility that has the followin features:

• Uses custom made log format that results in smaller log files that can be zipped and emailed to a unique logserver email address over satellite phone. This means that significant savings are made over unreliable links.
• The procedure of log upload is completely automatic ie once the log is emailed to the specific email address, the server opens the email, unzips, and uploads the qsos to the  database
• DXers are able to search for their QSOs as soon as the above process is complete
• FAST! Log search results are returned in less than 1s
• The results are shown in a tabular format and apart from the mode/band worked, the DXpeditioning operator's callsign is also shown .
  
• Real propagation information is also available between the DX station and either the DXer's country or DXer's CQ zone. This propagation is derived by the analysis of ALL the QSOs in the database and is provided in a graphical format by means of bar charts by hour and by band. This can provide important information to the DXers who wish to contact the DXpedition on a specific band.
  
• To add a competitive nature to the DXpedition, a leaderboard is created based on how many band/mode slots DXers have worked the expedition. Note that the speed of working the expedition for ALL QSOs plays a role for the order displayed. In addition, DUPLICATE QSOs count negatively in the leaderboard ranking!

 

Expeditions that used the applet:

• 3B7C by FSDXA [the main reason I created this applet. I am grateful to them for their help, ideas and debugging]
• VP6DX
• TX5C
• YK9G
  

This applet is available for use for other DXpeditions (free of charge) at my disgression. The applet requires MySQL and  PHP 4+ support on your server. Please note that I have a very demanding full time job so do NOT ask my help at the last minute.