My AMSAT Etiquette - Rule 1

There has been a lot of chatter recently about etiquette, rules, and bad practice on the Satellites. I think it's worth noting how I operate on the birds, not necessarily to tell you it's how it should be done, but more or less to explain my reasoning for doing the things I do. For the record, I still consider myself to be a new operator, even though I'm approaching 3 years active, and have a pile of rare contacts and extreme DXs on my resume. I still look to those who have been active a lot longer than me to temper my attitude.

It's worth noting that there's a big difference between things that are are illegal, things that are bad form, and things that are just annoying. There are also exceptions to basically every rule, that apply in extremely narrow circumstances. I will try to elaborate on these when I can.

So, with all this in mind, I'm going to do begin a new Opinion series on my AMSAT Etiquette rules. Feedback welcome, public or private.

Rule 1: I never transmit at the bird, if I can't first hear it. 

Most satellites in orbit transmit with a PEP of < 1W.. sometimes as low as 250mW. This makes them hard to hear. Even cheap Chinese HTs can transmit up to 5W, and it's very easy to get rigs transmitting 100W or more. This makes you very easy to hear. Satellites are a shared medium, with an uplink and a downlink. You have lots of users that are very easy to hear all trying to access a satellite that is hard to hear. See where I'm going with this? Even if you don't hear the Satellite, it very likely hears you. And while you might be transmitting 'in the blind' I can promise you that someone somewhere else can hear you doing it.... so when I'm thinking about keying up, every though I can't hear anything, I don't. Every satellite active in the sky either has some sort of 'beacon' that announces itself to anyone who can hear it, or has a transponder that has unique noise footprints, or has a carrier tone, or is so stinking busy with other users that it's impossible to miss. It is not a hard thing to wait until I hear the bird, and then key up. It's as simple as that. 

Exception 1: Before claiming this exception one should have a supreme grasp of Situational Awareness (SA). There are times when the bird may be way out over un-populated parts of the world and you might legitimately be the only operator using it. On a bird like SO-50 or AO-85 they have 'wake-up' tones (certain PL frequencies) in order to get the bird working. It is OK to transmit in the blind in order to wake up a bird, that you otherwise know is there, and is approaching your QTH from a part of the world where it's likely not active. This rule can apply to stations operating on the edge of civilization... near the coast, the far north, the far south, that sort of thing. The only time I will do this from Arkansas is if it's the middle of the night, and I *know* the bird should be there, or I'm traveling to an extreme section of the country (Like CM93) and feel pretty good I'm the first human with a footprint. 

Exception 2: When I'm pushing the distance envelope of what the satellite is capable of, and trying to make a contact with someone that I have a mutual window measured in seconds with, I will transmit in the blind for that station, hoping to get the QSO or the tuning started. This also requires Supreme SA, and there should be a very clear start/stop time to this transmission. If I should be hearing myself, and I'm not when the time rolls around, I will stop transmitting. 

The Atomic AMSAT Roadtrip - Part I

On July 16th, 1945 the United States of America detonated the first Atomic weapon in history. The Operation was code named Trinity, and for a brief moment early that morning, the New Mexican sky was lit up by a light that had never before bathed earth. 37 years later on July 16th, 1982 I was born. It doesn't necessarily mean anything, but with my interest in physics and science, it is obviously an auspicious date. I've always wanted to visit the Trinity site, and see things first hand - this year, I had the chance.

As many readers of my blog may know, Gabe, NJ7H, travels the country as what you could call the closest thing to a professional rover this hobby knows, besides people like UT1FG and ND9M. In his short year or so on the birds, he has activated over 250 grids in the US, Canada, and several other countries. Gabe is also a pilot, lives (relatively speaking) close, a few grids away in EM15, and is an all around good guy. Recently during a chat we were talking about Trinity, and I expressed my desire to go there sometime. He said 'well, what about the spring open house in a few months!' - I was sold. I made arrangements with the family, and started planning

The Trinity Site is inside White Sands Missile Range, which is still an active US military installation. It is only open to the public twice a year, once in the spring, and once in the fall. As you would think, places that we test nuclear weapons are not exactly close to civilization, and WSMR fits that bill well. Most of WSMR is in grid DM63 (for us Sat Ops) and it is also deep in what is known as the Chihuahuan Desert, surrounded by mountains in all directions, and at least 2 hours from the closest lodging of any significance. Too add to this, Gabe and I are both active sat rovers, and we had to make a plan to hit as many grids as possible to and from the site. If you know anything about Gabe, you also know that if you're within about 1000 miles of an international border, any roadtrip requires you to cross it. This led do a directive to visit Mexico during the journey too. Also since this was an Atomic roadtrip, we sought out any other landmarks of interest, and found the site of Project Gnome in southeastern New Mexico near the town of Carlsbad, that would be on the way home after visiting El Paso and Juarez. We had a general plan made.

Fast forward a couple weeks, and we were ready to go. I packed up the Mustang and headed for Oklahoma City (5 hours from the QTH) to crash at Gabe's Thursday night so we could get a jump on the trip the next morning. Patrick, AKA 'Jacket Guy' (A non-ham friend of Gabe) also decided to join us on the road trip, and ended up being an awesome addition. We also planned to meet a friend of mine from Arizona, as well as some of Gabe's former classmates from college. All in all, we had a crew. We picked up a rental car (the number of people going dictated something a big larger than the Crosstrek or the Stang) and headed west on I40. We didn't get too far before chatter from the peanut gallery (Other Satellite Ops on Twitter and Hangouts) demanded that we stop in EM05. So hey, why not.

We worked Matt, KK4FEM (who had asked for the stop) and a bunch of others. Now, it's worth mentioning here - that we hadn't really told the rest of the AMSAT community who else was with Gabe and me. I'm the one taking the picture, Gabe is operating, and there is another gentlemen (wearing a jacket) standing by as well. This instantly created the widely trending question of 'WHO IS THE JACKET GUY??' on the Atomic Amsat Roadtrip. Patrick was instantly christened as #JacketGuy.

Continuing down the trail our next goal was to stop on the DM95/DM94 Line, south of I-40 and just east of Amarillo. We had an spot picked out and everything, however due to a sick fascination with airplanes and arguments about what was the best <insert plane here> in the rover vehicle, we totally blasted right past our exit and had to settle for a spot just in DM95. This is when I also remembered my fun discovery of Periscope Live Video via twitter a few weeks back in Wisconsin. I made a few contacts on my station (for rover credit) and then went live:

https://t.co/wHHmbeY0NJ

— Dave Swanson (@KG5CCI) March 31, 2017

After our silly Periscoping, we continued west and south. We missed (yet another) exit in Amarillo and had to loop back to head south. Our next stop was a Walmart in DM94, where we grabbed some gas and other provisions. We also went live here while working from the parking lot.

https://t.co/sVjHBX9Awc

— Dave Swanson (@KG5CCI) March 31, 2017

We continued west and South, making one stop in DM84 next to a feed lot that smelled like it. At this point we were hitting grids frequented by Clayton, W5PFG and chaser demand was light, but were racking up credit for our own rover scoreboard. The journey progressed west and south, and afternoon turned into evening. Finally after many miles on the road (and an interesting experience with a crazy homeless guy in Roswell) we hit our first day's destination - The Valley of Fires Campground.

We managed to get our camp setup, and headed back into town for some late evening grub, and made further plans. At this point we were only a few miles from the DM63/DM73 line and figured we should get it activated that night on a nice SO50, AO73, and EO88 trifecta of passes. We drove in the dark until we found the line, and put it on the air. Since this was a set of awfully rare grids, I actually worked NJ7H on AO73, via the my remote station, on my phone, with sketchy reception barely keeping it together for my own chaser credit. After that I setup my own portable station and jumped on the SO-50 pass to join in the rover activation fun. We promptly shut down after those passes, headed back to camp, crawled into our tents, and passed the @#$% out. It had been a very long day, and we had another long day coming up.

1 Year & Housekeeping Notes

So my blog has been up for just over a year now, and I've made 21 entries thus far. Some were pretty simple, like saying 'first!1!!', some were just a bunch of pictures, some I probably should have split into multiple entries. With this in mind, I'm going to try my best to stick to the 2 entries per month for the upcoming year, but I might up that if I have a lot of good content. I may also go to a more scheduled approach to things, trying always to get a new blog entry out on Monday, in order to give people something to look forward too.  For note, I've got 6 entries I haven't completed yet, I'm just working on getting content together for them. There's always things I can blog about, it's really just a matter of acquiring pictures and media to have a nice interactive experience :)

Also, after a year of entries I've been able to pretty well classify everything I write into 3 categories. Stories, Tech, and Opinions. I've added Label functionality to my blog, so if you're interested in a particular thing, it's easy to find and pull up - just click on the filter on the right of the page.

I especially will try to keep the Tech category on topic, and editorial free - cause there's a lot of folks interested in that. All my rants I'll definitely keep to Opinion, cause there's only a few interested in that. That's it for now, thanks for reading, and here's to more in the coming year!

Business Trips, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Semi-Duplex

2 weeks ago I was told I needed to fly to Milwaukee for  <insert corporate speak here> to do <insert more corporate stuff here>.  My travel plans and work schedule would allow for some downtime to go outside and explore the area, and while there are a few Satellite operators in the area, there were a few grids that needed some rover love too.  Plus it was a part of the country I'd never been to before with the arrow, and I'm always looking to expand my VUCC/R portfolio. A couple things I was thinking about before though.. I've been toying with a home based automated station since the trip to CM93. It's still got a lot of work to go, but it's more or less passable.. kinda... most of the time. Where I was staying for work was only about 90 minutes south of EN65, which is a grid that I (and quite a few others) needed. So how to go operate /P from that grid, with my equipment, and still have equipment at home running my remote station. Also since I would be flying, space would be at a premium and small multi-use equipment would be the order of the day. Also some power (to control the pileups) and all mode capability were a must. What to do..

The Home Station. It mostly Works. 

Well, first thing first - the 821 has to stay at home. Too big, plus it runs the remote station. So that leaves with with the 857 as my only other all mode rig. I've got a Funcube Dongle Pro+ I've used on occasion, but all the stuff to hook up to laptop and run power inverters in the car and a table to put the equipment is such is a pain, and not conducive to a guerrilla portable operation like I was needing to conduct. So after much soul searching (and a couple beers) I settled on the 857 solo. This was not an easy decision to make. In the 3ish years I've been a Satellite operator, I have never run half duplex. Even my very first contact on SO-50 I was full duplex on. I learned that full duplex was the way to be, and the semi-duplexers were lids that just jammed up the birds talking over others. Semi-Duplex operation is the devil and should be shunned. Well, now here I was getting ready to tip toe onto the dark side's playing field. Gee whiz, how things change.

First the build... how to make a mobile rig like the 857 portable. The most obvious solution is to hang it around your neck like the 817, but finding a way to attach it to myself would require some construction. After getting a tip from Matt, KK4FEM, he said that metal rulers ($2 a piece at Harbor freight) make great side mounts for the 857. After grabbing the rulers, finding the correct M6-4 screws, some hole punching and drilling, and liberating and old strap from a backpack, we were in business with the radio. Next I hacked up some small 5 ft RG8X jumpers (cause I've got a ton of that coax laying around) crimped on proper connectors to work with a Comet 4160 Diplexer I had, put my small 8400mah Zippy battery in the pocket of my hoody, connected the mess of cables together and to my spare arrow, and I became a fully contained pedestrian mobile ground station.

Building Tools, out of Tools

So, now to test. From what I understand the standard 'rule' for operating half duplex on FO29 is to find a quiet 10khz chunk of transponder or so AWAY from the center - In this case I went to 435.870 and scanned up and down 10khz to make sure it was clear. I then fixed my TX at 145.930 - figuring I'd come out at 870 +/- doppler. I then took an educated guess (as the bird was about 10° above the horizon) on a 60° TCA pass, figuring I should hear people responding to me about .878 or so. I also made sure to give a fairly long call and specifically say I was half duplex in my CQ call, asking for people to give me a long call in their reply, cause it would take me a second to tune them in. Right away I picked up KD8CAO, who did just what I had requested, giving me a nice long phonetic response allowing me to tune him in easily. We had a quick chat, with my TX remaining fixed on .930 and my doppler slowly dropping in frequency as the bird's relative speed to me changed. I picked up W5PFG and a few more, and called it a successful test. Alright, so this just might work afterall. I packed everything up, loaded up my suitcases, and went on with my week.

Fast forward a couple days and I'm on site in Milwaukee. I find myself on the EN63/53 with my setup. SO-50 is coming, I work the pass, hand out some grids. Not too bad. SO-50 is probably the easiest, and simultaneously the hardest of the birds to work half duplex, in my opinion. In theory you just fix your TX at 145.850, listen on the downlink, everyone is one spot. Piece of cake, right? Well, not so much.. Everyone and their dog is on SO-50 these days, and like any single channel repeater, everyone is talking over each other.. so without full duplex operation, you don't know if you're actually making it in. This is, obviously, problematic.. but it's not the end of the world. If you're in a rare spot, you can let some others do some work for you. Since they're wanting to talk to YOU - they'll keep at it until you answer them. This makes it a bit easier as the one being chased, versus the one doing the chasing. Also, be prepared to answer people a few times if they don't seem to 'hear' you when you respond, there's a good chance you're getting stepped on. Just the way of the world.

It's cold... and dark.. and cold. 

So SO-50 was working pretty well. The next night I tried an AO-85.. this is a little trickier, since you have to adjust the uplink instead of the downlink. Luckily I've worked it enough that I had a pretty good idea of what the doppler should look like, and managed to make a handful of contacts. AO-85 is also a much less busy bird than SO-50 is, and the operators that frequent it tend to have better skill. So, having a handful of passes under my belt, I upped my game a bit.

Peter, 2E0SQL is an AMSAT friend, and at the time was hunting his 100th grid for his VUCC. EN63 (where I was staying) would have been a new one for him. If you notice the callsign though, you know he's in the UK, and transatlantic passes are not exactly a piece of cake, let alone using something other than my 821, and a short arrow, and RG8X, and me being half-duplex. It would be a challenge to say the least, but that doesn't mean we weren't going to give it a shot anyway. So we found a pass that worked, decided on a frequency I would call CQ on, and then he would hunt me down and we'd try to make the contact. Luckily my hotel room was on the 3rd floor, and I had a balcony, and it was facing the proper direction for the bird. So even with alot of factors stacked against us, we had the Location factor on our side. All the stars aligned, and right at my AOS Saturday morning I started calling CQ and Peter found me and we had a very quick QSO at 6200km, with all the above caveats. Not too shabby. Even better, I found MI6GTY calling CQ a few khz below us, and by dumb luck managed to adjust my uplink close enough he was able to find me. So on a 3.2° TCA FO29 pass, with sub-optimal gear managed 2 transatlantic QSOs while still in my pajamas, on the balcony of my hotel room. That was pretty cool, I have to say.

Mountain or Building.. Still all about the Location.

I could keep going on for a while talking about this, but I drove around, made some more contacts, finished up my project, and came home. To tell you the specifics of everything would take multiple more entries, and I don't have that kind of time. I do want to mention specifically though meeting up with David, WN9Q who lives a bit north of where I was doing my work. I had some downtime between passes Saturday afternoon, and I stopped by to meet him for a bit while he was helping at a community Ice Rink. We attempted the world first Zamboni Mobile QSO, but didn't have much luck, being inside a building and all.. We chatted, swapped stories, and played around on the ice with heavy equipment and Arrows... all in all a great afternoon. David is a super cool guy, and it was good to meet him in the frozen north. 73 my friend.

Yes, I was twisting for polarity.

David, WN9Q and Dave, KG5CCI

I guess the point about all this I'm trying to make is, half duplex should not be your go-to method for working the birds. It felt really really weird skipping most of the mode B passes, and not hearing my own voice to know I was getting in and on frequency. I would not recommend anyone use semi-duplex for chasing folks either... unless you're the DX, no one is going to give you the slow calls that are required to switch around and make the QSO. Satellites are a fast and furious business, and you gotta be on the ball to be a good chaser. All this said, if you ARE the DX - and you know people are going to be looking for you, and you're in a situation, like I was, where you're strapped for space, time, and resources, and the only other alternative is simply not having a radio at all... semi-duplex will get the job done. Stick primarily to the mode J birds, fix your transmit, never key up unless you're hearing things first, let the chasers come to you, keeps things simple, and practice. Like every aspect of this hobby, there are lots of ways to get that contact made. Don't let you preconceived notions of how to do things hold you back. Embrace the new and the different. You might just surprise yourself. I know I sure did. 

Illinois State Beach on Lake Michigan. Looks nice, still cold.  

New Records, New Grids, Random Musings

I always complain about being busy, but it's no joke the past month or so. Work stuff is increasing at a high pace, and my grad school work is entering it's final sprint. I did however manage an interesting, fun and productive few days on the radio.

First, FO29 is fast approaching apogee on ascending passes. When it does this, Europe gets just ever so slightly in range of me here in Arkansas, and you can really stretch the footprint. A few months back I made a great contact with Jerome, F4DXV on FO29 from his portable location in JN05ha where he has a perfect horizon view. I was on Shinall mountain, here in EM34st (my normal low elevation spot) and we made a great contact at 7587km - 13km shy of the record I set with F4CQA a couple years back. Well, we both knew more was possible, it was just a matter of finding the right spot and right time. Fast forward a few months to February 26th.. FO29 wasn't quite at apogee, but she was close, and a Sunday morning was the perfect time for both of us to give it a shot. Jerome headed to his portable location in JN05ha, and I headed up the road to Mt. Nebo in EM35IF. Even though it was almost a 90 mile drive for me, it was the perfect high altitude location, and it was 20km further in great circle distance, making it a good candidate for a new record shot. We both got on location, setup our cameras, and waited for the bird... which of course showed up on time and quickly exchanged our grid codes and reports, and voila - a new record was in the book.

I've got some video, but I just haven't had time to put it all together yet. For now, Here's the Audio Recording that Wyatt, AC0RA managed to capture of both of us, and some pictures:

Dave, KG5CCI, EM35IF Mt. Nebo Arkansas 2/26/2017 1317z

Jerome, F4DXV, JN05HA, near Mussidan, France 2/26/2017 1317z

Thanks to Jerome for suggesting the idea and congratulations my friend on a WORLD RECORD qso at 7608km. Also thanks to Wyatt, AC0RA, for sitting in the middle and grabbing a nice recording for us.

On a nowhere near as epic, but still cool note - had some good mail this week:

Eugene UX0FY, who is Yuri UT1FG's QSL manager sent me a list of grids that I've worked the captain in the past couple of years. I was especially keen to get my hands on CM79 - which is where I worked Yuri during his cruise up the west coast a few years ago, and is one of the most difficult of the Magic 488 to work. Yuri and Eugene are both sort of tough to get in touch with outside of the radio, so hopefully if they (or you, and you know them) are reading this, a huge thanks to you guys from sick radio nerds like me. Living vicariously thru the satellites to the DX on the other end is what this hobby so damn interested. Best 73s, and here's to many more. 

With this new grid infusions, it brings my grid total to 609 confirmed.. if I ever get around to taking my cards to a checker, that will put me in the top 20 grid chasers of all time. Pretty crazy for a guy with an arrow and only a couple years under his belt eh? Then again, I'm still not even to 50% of what the top 5 have, so there's a long ways to go. 

The chase never ends :)

SO-50 - A Case Study

I post this video with only the following context: Gabe, NJ7H is on a rare grid road-trip thru the Northwest part of Canada. He stopped on the DO22/DO32 Line to do two passes; A Ukube-1 pass to my west, and a single SO50 to my northeast. I drove to the mountain to have the best chance at a QSO, and it managed to pay off as I picked him up quickly on Ukube-1.

Instead of tearing down and going back to the office though, I disconnected all the TX portions of my rig, and setup to record video only because I wanted to demonstrate how polarity works with a perfect horizon, and because I thought it would be good to show a solid rover like Gabe in action.

Well, I got some video alright, and it showed way more than what I had bargained for. I present to you the 1/23/2017 2012z SO-50 pass from my location in EM34.

So.. Here's the play by play:

(Waiting for AOS)
(Start to hear the modulation of the bird)
(Someone keys down)
NJ7H Announces himself.
(I start playing with Polarity, showing how it MATTERS)
KB1PVH Calls NJ7H/VE6 - Completes QSO.
WC7V Calls NJ7H/VE6 - Completes QSO.
N8HM Calls NJ7H/VE6 - Completes QSO.
KB1RVT Calls NJ7H/VE6 - Completes QSO.
NX9B Calls, N4UFO calls at the same time, smashes NX9B
NJ7H/VE6 Starts to Answer N9XB - But WA4NVM comes in and smashes NJ7H's QSL..
NJ7H/VE6 Answers WA4NVM, gives grids.
K8IPV comes in an announces himself after a lull.
NU4FO calls NJ7H/VE6 again.
WA4NVM calls NJ7H/VE6 again.
Someone says "Hey already got you rick" which is quickly followed by NX9B giving his call, again.
WA4NVM announces himself, again, probably trying to get NJ7H/VE6.
N4UFO Clearly says "Hey answered you rick" and then gives his own callsign, again.
NJ7H/VE6 answers N4UFO gives grid. N4UFO quickly gives 73s - Completes QSO.
KC1EXK calls NJ7H/VE6 - Completes QSO.
N9IP calls NJ7H/VE6 - NJ7H/VE6 answers, but is stepped on by someone announcing themselves in EN80, like K8IPV.
NX9B announces himself, again. NJ7H/VE6 QSLs him, again.
WA4NVM calls NJ7H/VE6, again. Gabe answers him, again. WA4NVM finally QSLs him.
NX9B cals NJ7H/VE6, again.
K8IPV calls NX9B.
N9XB calls NJ7H/VE6, yet again.
NJ7H/VE6 QSLs NX9B, for a THIRD time.
W4FS calls NJ7H/VE6, but is stepped on by N9IP.
W4FS calls NJ7H/VE6 again.
KK4FEM calls NJ7H/VE6.
Someone announces "He has half a degree"
W4FS calls NJ7H/VE6 again.
Someone asks "What were the grids?" "Delta Oscar 22 and 32" is answered. "Thanks"
N9IP calls NJ7H again.
"He's out of the footprint, minus 1 1/2 degrees"
"Delta Oscar 32 Again?"
"Delta Oscar 22, Delta Oscar 32"
NM3B answers "QSL, NM3B FN01, your call again?"
(I bust out laughing in the background)
"They were asking about a station that's out of footprint Wayne"
"If Everyone would listen we'd be alot more efficient here. Especially in such a narrow window"

End of the interesting stuff.


Analysis:

Wow.

I honestly think most of this goes into the category of what a friend of mine referred to as 'general liddery'. The commentary, post footprint talk, and just randomly announcing yourself is kinda silly, and definitely requires better situational awareness, but I don't believe there was any malice intended. Get better situationally aware, get better ears, just try harder. It happens though, we all make mistakes. I screwed up myself tonight on a few occasions... No Harm, No Foul..

....Except where there is harm intended.

<This is going to offend some people. Stop reading now if you're a precious snowflake>

Two operators in particular, N9XB and WA4NVM broke the cardinal rule of Satellite operating. Never transmit if you can't hear. Both of these operators have been at this a long time. They have a ton of grids (more than me) - They have automated stations, and they know the score. NJ7H had to answer WA4NVM twice, and had to answer NX9B 3 times before they finally used their 'release to listen' buttons and heard their QSL.

I try real hard to cut people slack, but these two deserve no slack at all. Their activity is bordering on malicious interference... and this is not the first time, or even the second time. If you're reading this, and you operate Satellites (two things that are very likely) then you've probably heard these two at it - and you know quite well they're repeat offenders.

Do me, yourself, and this entire community a favor. Tell them to piss off. Operating practices like these are a pox on amateur radio satellites. We as operators have to call out our own when they act like this.

Logging EVERYTHING to LOTW

As I fully expected, my post about Logging Satellite Contacts to LOTW generated a fair number of questions and got some interest. In particular, how I log EVERYTHING into the different logging systems came up a couple times.  So strap in, here we go...

As said before, I operate primarily Satellites, with some portable terrestrial mixed in, and I also activate Summits on the Air. I use LOTW as my primary QSL path, and I use the QRZ logbook for an online logbook database. LOTW and QRZ both accept ADIF uploads, though they are slightly different in how they do it. I also have to upload my SOTA activations to the SOTA database to get credit there. What this comes out too is there are 5 different types of files I typically have to generate if I've had an all band SOTA activation weekend. That's a ton of different data to work with, but it's doable. I'm also a spreadsheet fiend - in my day job tons and tons of data is moved about via spreadsheets, and they lend themselves to script friendly formats (like CSV - comma separated value)  well. So the idea I had was take a spreadsheet, be able to toss in the minimal amount of information required about my contacts, and then have a script generate everything based on that input. Challenging, but not impossible.

So, here's how it works, I've got 3 main files that do the work. The first is the Logger Spreadsheet. Looks something like this:

As you can see, there's a little bit of everything going on here. In places where you make a satellite contact, just mark which Satellite it was. The script will fill the mode/frequency and special propagation values for LOTW and QRZ. Where you make a SOTA activation, it will automatically create a SOTA file as well for upload to the database. Anything that isn't a Sat contact, will be considered an 'HF' contact (even if it's something like a contact over 2 meter simplex) and a different file will be made for QRZ/LOTW upload there. Note: You have to either put in a bird name, or fill out the frequencies... if you do both - the script will overwrite your submitted frequency values, and if you do neither the script will error out. If you put in a bird name the script doesn't recognize (more on that in a second) it will also error out. If in doubt, look at the examples in the picture above, which is also the sample file that I included with the download.

So, where does the bird data come from? Glad you asked! There's a special Text file that contains all that in (drumroll please) CSV formatted reference file name appropriate sat-data.txt. It looks something like this:

Every bird that I might make a QSO on, I keep listed in this file. The breakdown should be easy enough to understand, but in case it isn't.. Here's what each field means.

<BIRDNAME>,<MODE>,<UPLINK_BAND>,<UPLINK_FREQ>,<DOWNLINK_BAND>,<DOWNLINK_FREQ>.

Cool? Good. When new birds got chucked into orbit, instead of having to piss with the entire script, just add a new line entry here and you're good to go. Try and make sure the name is in the same format as LOTW accepts though, cause if it isn't exactly right, it will error out when you try to get TQSL to upload it, which is something that has caught me before.

The final file in the bundle is the Perl Script itself. There's really nothing here you need to mess with.. just make sure it's in the same directory (or folder) as your sat-data.txt and your "Logger-Spreadsheet.csv" and you're good to go. One caveat to the "nothing to mess with rule" is that if you want to be fancy and set your own home grid, or change the names of some of the variables, at the very top of the script you can do just that. Fire up your favorite text editor, and the open 25 or so lines of the perl script look like this:

Home Grid, Input Spreadsheet Name, and Sat Data file name are basically the only variable's that should really matter. Just keep em the way you want, and you're good to go. Don't mess with any of the code below the "DON'T MESS WITH ANY OF THE CODE BELOW THIS" banner. That is unless you want to. It's open source. Have at it.

Once the script is ran, in the directory where you launched it you'll get any number of 5 different files. They're named pretty self-explanatory, but for verbosity I'll cover em all.

satqrzimport.adi = Upload this to QRZ for you Satellite Contacts
satlotwimport.adi = Upload This to LOTW for your Satellite Contacts
hfqrzimport.adi = Upload this to QRZ for HF
hflotwimport.adi = Upload this to LOTW for HF
sotaimport.csv = Upload this to the SOTA database

Each time you run the script it will delete these files (if they're in the directory where it's being run) and build them from scratch, if they are needed. You can keep uploading the same filenames over and over again to all the respective systems (LOTW, QRZ, SOTA) and they don't care.. it's all about what have you done lately with them.

So still Interested? Download the files Here and make your logging life lots simpler.

Anything else that might come up, hit me up on Twitter @KG5CCI.