This is a scratchpad for me to keep progress on my editing of the VQLog logbook program.Notes...
a) When I examine all of the QSO's imported from Fastlog, my callsign and locator are missing from each record. So, if I do a search under 'blank' callsign, I get the correct totals for DXCC etc. When I do a search under 'EI7GL', I only get totals based on the entries that I have edited already and put in my call and locator.
First QSO...3rd Oct 1986!
Fri 14th of Nov 2008...Checked up as far as and including...31/10/1987...QSO Nr.00181
Sat 15th of Nov 2008...Checked as far as 20/12/1987...QSO Nr.00296
With 300 QSO's checked up as far as the end of 1987, I have noticed 2 things....
1) DX on 144 MHz SSB. Lots of contacts into ON, PA and F on 2m. It kind of got me thinking about 2m ssb again! But then again, things were different in 1987. There were a lot more stations on 2m ssb then. If I had the same conditions now and was using the same gear, would I work as much?? I kind of doubt it.
2) Loads of 10 metre contacts in November 1987. Most if not all F2 layer. Lots of Europeans, some USA and DX. 1987 was getting close to the peak of that solar cycle. Huge difference in conditions between then and now...November 2008 as we are just passing Solar minimum.
Sun 16th of Nov 2008...Checked up as far as 17/06/1988...QSO Nr.00365
Mostly Summer Sporadic-E contacts around Europe on 10 metres with some DX stuff as well. Two contacts caught my interest...
1) TQ6JUN...a special event station on 10 metres on the 6th of June 1988, 40 years after the D-Day Normandy landings, an event that is now 60 years ago.
2) FY0EK on 10 metres in the Ariane Space Centre in French Guyana.
Mon 17th of Nov 2008...Checked up as far as 23/10/1988...
Finished up until the end of 1988. A few things stood out...
1) Lots of 10m Sporadic-E contacts...especially West Germany!
2) Contacts with what was then the Soviet Union...UR2 (Estonia), UP2 (Lithuania)
3) Contacts with East Germany (Y22)
4) And on the local scene, Charlie EI5FK reading the IRTS on 10 metres every week! Guess there must have been more EI stations on 10m back then.
Tues 18th Nov 2008...Checked up as far as 02/07/1991...
1990....My first 50 MHz contact! Iwas using a home brew Meon transverter with a might 0.25w o/p!! Antenna was a half wave dipole in the attic.
1991...April....I built an amplifier for the Meon. Output power 4 watts....QRO at last!
1991...June...With 4 watts and the attic dipole, I worked loads of Europeans on 50 Mhz via Sporadic-E that month....SM, OH, OE, OZ, DL, LX, ON, I, HB9, PA, G, GM, LA, CU3. What was obvious from the logbook is that this is still a new band with lots of people using transverters and the typical power level was around 10 to 20 watts. At this time, countries like Spain did not have access to the band. Another unusual feature was that all Italian stations were confined to a small segment within the band.
1991...July...Unusual contact...worked EJ7FRL on 2m on the Fastnet Rock Lighthouse off the SW coast of Ireland. Built a 2 element yagi for 50 MHz and put it up outdoors, ~6 metres above ground level. Big improvement in reported signals.
Looking at VQLog, I had done this editing process before but only got as far as July 91.
Wed 19th Nov 2008...Checked up as far as 30/10/1991...
1991...October...Nice aurora on 28/10/91. Worked several stations on 6m ssb even with 4w to a 2 el yagi. Some nice DX contacts on 10m as well, conditions are good.
Thurs 20th Nov 2008...The 1st logbook is now checked....Checked up as far as 16/03/1992.
1992...7th of February. An amazing day for VHF propogation. In the afternoon, I managed to work AI1K, K1TOL & VE1YX with my 4 watts and 2 element beam! Propogation was F2. Later that evening, 2 metres opened up with contacts down to Spain and a tropo duct into PA & DL. It's amazing to think that it is possible to get a contact from Cork to Berlin at 144 MHz with just 25 watts and a small beam.
VQLog notes (mainly for my own use...)
1) When I imported the log from Fastlog to VQLog, all the information transferred ok. However, when I check each individual qso, my call is missing from the callsign field. My locator is missing as well. I need to edit each qso and click on the pull down menu to put in my call and locator.
2) When I put all of the qso data into Fastlog back around 1998?, I left out a lot of contacts like countries on 10m that I had already confirmed. At the time, I just wanted to get a logbook up and running asap. However, when I got qsl cards from some of those 'omitted' contacts, I got a 'not in log' result and I had to go looking for the contact and then adding the contact to Fastlog. This time, as I edit the log, I will put everything in from the paper logs so it an accurate reflection on what I have worked (....with the exception of repeater qso's)
3) I had a lot of info in the comment field in Fastlog that I used to track various things...DIG, WAS, WAB, etc. I need to edit each qso anyway to put this information into the correct field for award tracking.
Friday 21st of November....Checked up as far as 27/03/1992...
1992....3rd of March....Nice tropo opening on 2 metres down to the West coast of France...IN96,97, JN05,06,07. One station in IN96 gave me a 5/5 report when I reduced my power to o.5 watts!
1992...16th of March...My 1st contact on 20 metres....6 years after I got my class A licence! Guess I wasn't too interested in HF back then ;o)
1992...March...Lots of nice DX on 28 MHz. I have VK5EK logged as having a 5/9+15dB signal. Plenty of signals from the West coast of the US as well. I have a note in the log saying that solar flux in mid-April was 130.
Saturday 22nd of November.....Checked up as far as 10/05/1992...
1992...10th of May...Big aurora. Worked loads of G stations with my 4 watts and 2 element on 50 MHz. Also managed to work a G and a GW station on 28 MHz via aurora but the signals were very weak.
Sun 23rd Nov.....Checked up as far as 8/6/1992...
1992...17th of May....Big tropo opening on 2m to G/F/PA/GU/GJ. Tried a test with GP4IPA in Guernsey....he gave me 5/9+20 with 25 watts, 5/9+10 with 3 watts and 5/8 with 0.5 watts.
1992...May...Loads of Sporadic-E on 50 MHz. Managed to work 5B4 in Cyprus on double hop with my 4 watts.
Mon 24th Nov.....Checked up as far as 5/7/1992...
1992...22nd of June...Big Sporadic-E opening on 2 metres. Filled nearly 4 pages in the log......31 DL, 32 SP, 2 OE, 1 HA, 15 YU and 2 OK.
1992...June....I noted one unusual contact where I had worked GW0PLP in Wales on 28 MHz via tropo! We were both using verticals. Distance about 270 kms.
Tues 25th Nov.....Checked up as far as 27/7/1992...
1992...July...Nothing special except I was out portable a lot in West Cork and Kerry on 2 metres....Bear Island, Hungry Hill, Mangerton, Caherconree and IO41 square. Also had my first contact on 70 cms.
Wed 26th Nov.....Checked up as far as 13/9/1992...
Thurs 27th Nov.....Checked up as far as 3/10/1992...
Looking through the log, I have lots of little notes made. One typical note was regarding an antenna test. Not long after I got my licence, I built a little low power attenuator that would go up in 1 dB and 5 dB steps. I know that on 144 MHz, it's not super accurate ;o) but good enough to get a rough idea of what is going on. The test in question involved John, EI6AK. He had a colinear at about 10 feet out in his garden. He made a note of my signal at various power levels. A few days later, he moved the colinear to the roof of his house. By noting the amount of power that I needed to achieve the old signal levels, I estimated that his signals had improved by around 7dB....the equivalent of running 50 watts instead of 10 watts! A worthwhile improvement and proves that height above ground level is really important at VHF frequencies.
Fri 28th Nov...Checked up as far as 24/12/1992...
1992...7th & 8th Oct...Some nice tropo ducting on 144 MHz into Europe. The one contact that stands out is OK1VEI using 25w and a 7 element. An amazing distance for tropo.
1992...Oct...Built a colinear for 70 cms and put it in the attic. Performance is pretty impressive compared to a simple dipole. What becomes obvious is that 432 MHz signals are nearly always weaker than 144 MHz signals and they certainly don't go around hills so well.
1992...Oct...Bought a 2nd hand Diamond X510 dual band vertical and put it up on a 15ft pole. Comparing it to the Slim Jim that I had outdoors, my signal improved to stations in Cork City by around 5 to12 dB. Probably a combination of more gain and less obstructions like the house in the way.
1992...6th Nov...Worked EI5FK on 70 cms. My path to EI5FK's is very difficult as I have some very high local hills in the way. Charlie could hear me When I was using the indoor colinear but nothing with the outdoor Diamond. That's the thing with 70 cms, it can always suprise.
Sat 29th Nov...Checked up as far as 10/06/1993...
1993...5th Feb...More nice tropo on 2m. Some of the best ducting seems to occur in the early hours of the morning. 00:40...work DC3QB who is using an indoor 9 element yagi!! Later the same evening, I work G0NXD who is on the 19th floor of a block of flats in Birmingham using a J-stick on FM. Amazing when you consider that the signal had to come over the mountains in Wales.
1993...7th June...Yet another 70 cms suprise. Worked EI5HG who was near the local car ferry. Nothing unusual in that as it is local. What is suprising is that from that location, which is completely blocked from Cork City, EI5HG managed to work EI3EBB in the city on 70 cms yet they could not work on 2 metres. One possible answer is that the 70 cms signals were bouncing off the large IFI/NET building to the North while the 145 MHz could not??? Without beams, it would be impossible to prove. Still though, it proved that sometimes the 70 cms signal will get through while the 2 metre signal won't. It is supposed to be for this reason, i.e. the ability of the shorter wavelenght signal to bounce off objects, that 70 cms is often supposed to be better in cities than 2 metres.
1993...10th June...Big Sporadic-E opening on 144 MHz. 99 QSOs...10 countries...38 squares.
Sun 30th Nov...Checked up as far as 22/06/1993...
1993...11th June...I had recently built a 70 MHz to 144 MHz transverter. The o/p power on 4 metres was only 0.2 watts. During a QSO with DK2ZF, I tried transmitting on 70.200 MHz with the 0.2 watts and using the 2 element 6 m beam. DK2ZF said he could hear my signal. Amazing...
1993...15th June....Did some tests with EI3EBB (10 kms to the West). Both of us listened to another EI station on 144 MHz about 120 kms to the North. There was a lot of fading on the signals. Sometimes, the signal got weak with both of us at the same time. Other times, it was strong with me and weak at EI3EBB's location and vice versa.
1993...16th June. Worked UZ2FWA (Kaliningradsk) on 10m/6m crossband. i.e. I was transmitting on 50 MHz.
Mon 1st Dec...Checked up as far as 16/07/1993...
I had a bit of a scare with the log. I thought I might have entered some of the QSO times incorrectly, i.e. putting in local Summer time instead of UTC. The way Logbook of the World works is that it looks for a match within a 30 minute window. If my contacts were 1 hour out, then they are useless. After digging out some old QSL cards, I was able to confirm that all the data that I had entered was correct! Phew.....!!
The problem stems from my very first paper logbook. In the space for time, it just says 'Time' and not 'UTC'. So not knowing any better when I started, I logged everything in local time. This was fine in the winter but everything was 1 hour out in the summer. Eventually after a few years, I started keeping everything in UTC. Fine as long as I can remember when I started to use UTC all of the time. The problem is that I have forgotten!
Lesson......always keep your logbook in UTC, not local time!
1993...4th July. Make my 1st 4 metre contact with EI7M/P who is 120 kms away. I was using 0.2 watts from the transverter into a home made 2 element yagi in the attic.
Tues 2nd Dec...Checked up as far as 01/05/1994...
1993...12th August. Worked an Italian and German station on 2m SSB during the Perseids meteor shower. Some of the bursts were 10 seconds long allowing a complete QSO to take place. Also listened on 70 MHz to an expedition station in Scotland. There were some very impressive 10, 20 and even 50 second bursts on this band.
1993...18th August. Nice tropo opening on to the North West coast of France. Worked F1EMX on 70 cms SSB who was using 10 watts and a quarter wave antenna in his attic. I was using 10 watts into the colinear in my attic.....attic to attic on 432 MHz!!
About 3- minutes later, I managed to have a 2m to 23cms crossband QSO with F5PAU. I was holding the 23 cms yagi in my hand and pointing it at the window with the cable going to a scanner. 530 kms on 1296 MHz.....Amazing.
1993...Oct...Some nice conditions on 10 metres. One contact that stands out is with KD2RZ who is using 5 watts from a car in a parking lot in New Jersey.
1994...Feb...Some interesting contacts via the Russian RS-12 satellite....up on 15 metres and down on 10m. The doppler shift was low enough that it was a pleasure to use.....not like the current crop of 432/144 MHz satellites.
1994...Mar...It was from here on that kept using UTC for all Summertime contacts.
Wed 3rd Dec....The 2nd logbook is now checked...Checked up as far as 29/05/1994 (13:33)...
Thurs 4th Dec...Checked up as far as 03/05/1995...
Sat 6th Dec...Checked up as far as 13/05/1995...
Mon 8th Dec...Checked up as far as 05/06/1995...
Tues 9th Dec...Checked up as far as 25/06/1995...
Wed 10th Dec...Checked up as far as 18/07/1995...
Fri 12th Dec...Checked up as far as 29/07/1995...
Going through the logbooks is slow going. I left out loads of contacts when I was first typing up Fastlog. For example if I had one of the more popular countries worked on one of the HF bands, I didn't put any more from those countries into Fastlog. I'm pretty sure that once I finished the initial process of typing up Fastlog, I put in all subsequent contacts after that. This was probably sometime around 1997?
Sun 14th Dec...Checked up as far as 23/09/1995...
Tues 16th Dec...The 3rd logbook is now checked...Checked up as far as 05/04/1996...
Wed 17th Dec...Checked up as far as 22/05/1996...
Thurs 18th Dec...Checked up as far as 13/06/1996... Time for a break from updating! Approx 20% done. At this rate, I won't have the log updated until sometime in mid-April :o(
Sat 20th Dec...Checked up as far as 19/09/1996...
Sun 21st Dec...Checked up as far as 19/06/1997...
Mon 22nd Dec...Checked up as far as 24/07/1997...Judging by the log, I must have entered all of the original entries from the paper log into Fastlog sometime in late 1996 or early 1997. There are a lot fewer contacts omitted now when I am checking. Because of this, I have to enter less data and it is getting easier and faster to check the log.
Tues 23rd Dec...The 4th logbook is now checked...Checked up as far as 30/08/1997...
Wed 24th Dec...Checked up as far as 11/05/1998...
Sat 27th Dec...Checked up as far as 13/08/1998...Just passed the 30% mark.
Sun 28th Dec...Checked up as far as 05/04/1999...
Mon 29th Dec...The 5th logbook is now checked...Checked up as far as 06/07/1999...Just passed the 40% mark. From about late 1998 onwards, I have plenty of contacts for DXCC band countries that were never confirmed. In some cases, I never even sent a QSL card. I'm not sure if it is now too late to get these confirmed or if there are just too many of them??
Tues 30th Dec...Checked up as far as 13/11/1999...
Wed 31st Dec...Checked up as far as 18/03/2000...
Fri 2nd Jan...Checked up as far as 11/04/2000...
Sat 3rd Jan...The 6th logbook is now checked...Checked up as far as 29/06/2000...Just passed the 50% mark!! A lot of the contacts in 2000 consist of pile-ups and contests which are very quick to check and edit. Estimated completion date....early February 2009?? A lot better than the old estimate of mid-April 2009.
Sun 4th Jan...Checked up as far as 29/07/2000...Just passed the 60% mark!!
Due to a head cold, I checked a lot of the log today. At this rate, I would expect to have the log finished and checked by the end of January.
Mon 5th Jan...The 7th logbook is now checked...Checked up as far as 09/09/2000...
Tues 6th Jan...Checked up as far as 08/12/2000...Just passed the 70% mark!!
Wed 7th Jan...The 8th logbook is now checked...Checked up as far as 06/01/2001...
Thurs 8th Jan...Checked up as far as 03/03/2001...
Fri 9th Jan...Checked up as far as 09/06/2001...Just passed the 80% mark!!
Sat 10th Jan...The 9th logbook is now checked...Starting on the last and current logbook...Checked up as far as 15/11/2001...
Sun 11th Jan...Checked as far as 24/12/2001...Just passed the 90% mark!!
Mon 12th Jan...Checked as far as 13/09/2003...
Tues 13th Jan...Finished!! 2 months and 23,029 QSO's later...
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(Note to self....Any contacts for 2008 onwards are in VQLog and there is no need to edit them).
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