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tm HyperLog The "Electronic Logbook" for the Amateur Radio Operator by Joe Spear AH8B/W4 HyperSoft ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog HyperLog Copyright 1990 - 1992 by HyperSoft, P. O. Box 677, Tucker, Georgia 30085-0677. Telephone (404) 270-0364. Compuserve ID - 76370,2431. All Rights Reserved. No part of this pub- lication or program may be reproduced, photocopied, or tran- smitted except as provided by the License below. HYPERLOG is a copyrighted, program and is protected under the United States Copyright Law and various International Treaty provisions. It is offered "as is" for personal use, testing, and evaluation. HyperSoft makes no claim as to the program's suitability for any specific purpose and shall not be held responsible for any consequential damages that may possibly occur through the use or misuse of the program. The user is granted a license to distribute the program to anyone he sees fit to do so. This license to distribute includes all files EXCEPT the one named REGISTRATION.INF which is created (or supplied if ordered by mail) upon registration. The user is advised that if he does include this file, his callsign will be displayed on someone elses system anytime HyperLog is run as well as on all reports printed and any labels produced. If the other party uses Packet, the original callsign will also be sent out for any Packet connections. HyperLog may not be "resold" by Shareware distributors for a cost exceeding $5.00. The Shareware distributor should have a notice prominently displayed in their advertisement that the programs they distribute are Copyrighted by others and by paying the Shareware distributor a fee to purchase the disk does not constitute the purchase or registration of the program. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog HyperLog *********************** ATTENTION ************************** HyperSoft now has a new "800" order line. The number is 800-274-0890. This number is for ORDERS ONLY! Also, HyperSoft is now able to accept the following credit cards: Visa, MasterCard, Diners Club, Carte Blanche, Discover and JCB Our support line is still 404-270-0364 until March 1, 1992. On March 1, 1992, our new numbers will be: Orders : 800-274-0890 (same as before) Tech Support : 404-476-3608 BBS : 404-476-3646 Also, on March 1, 1992, our new address will be: 2825 Whippoorwill Circle, Duluth, GA. 30136. As you can see from the new phone numbers, we will have a full time BBS in operation on March 1, 1992. This BBS will always have the latest version of HyperLog available for downloading. If you are a registered user of HyperLog 2.0 or higher, your downloaded copy will be automatically "registered". Be sure to read any README.1ST files you may find in the downloaded copy. The BBS will support speeds from 300 to 9600 baud. The 9600 support is V32, V42, V42bis compatible. The BBS will also have any additional utility files we may make available in the future. These may include conversion programs, database sort utilities etc. Information on HyperLog and any other HyperSoft products will be posted as bulletins on the board. You will be able to leave any messages you desire and we will try to respond to them in a timely manner. Orders can also be left on the BBS (as a private message to the Sysop) and will be confirmed and processed daily. If for some reason we are not able to answer the phone when you call, we have an answering machine installed which will prompt you for all the information needed to take your order (if you call on the order line) or take your name and number so we may return your call as soon as possible. If you leave an order on the machine, as soon as we are able, we'll call you back confirming the order and provide you with your unique serial number to register the product. Our hours of operation are flexible and we will usually have someone to take your call 7 days a week from 0900 to 2200 Eastern Time. Technical support is better handled in the evenings from 1800 to 2200 or leave a message on the BBS. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog HyperLog TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 1 A. System Requirements 3 B. Files Supplied/Created 4 C. Registration 5 3. INSTALLATION 6 A. Running Setup 7 B. Converting your old Data File 12 4. GETTING STARTED 13 A. Autopilot Mode 14 B. Help System 16 C. Contact Entry 17 D. Editing previous contacts 23 E. Using the ten minute I.D. timer 24 F. Country Contacts 25 G. UTC / Local time selection 26 H. Recreating Master Indexes 27 I. Operating System Gateway 28 J. Displaying QSL statistics 29 K. Displaying Country QSL Statistics 30 L. Handling Extraneous call signs 31 M. Net/RoundTable Mode 32 N. Utility/Reports 33 O. Labels 35 P. CQ Zone Display 36 Q. Import/Export 37 R. Packet Radio operation 40 S. Database Browser 41 T. Report Browser 42 5. ADDITIONAL NOTES 43 ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog HyperLog 1. INTRODUCTION Welcome to HyperLog. HyperLog is an Amateur Radio logging program designed to make the "Hams" life easier by organiz- ing contact, WAS, WAZ, and DXCC information and displaying it in an easy to read format. It also displays other help- ful data on screen during a QSO. The program provides previous contact retrieval using a very fast B+ tree indexed search technique and displays these contacts in a scrolling window on the main screen as well as a full screen complete database browser. Bearing and distance details are provided by decoding the prefix of the call sign to determine the country or state and then looking up the correct latitude and longitude coordinates in a table. These coordinates, as well as your local coordinates, are then fed to a Great Circle calculation routine to obtain bearing and distance information. Unlike other programs, the algorithm used to decipher the call sign is quite sophisticated. It uses international call sign allocations as well as standard prefixes in order to correctly identify the country. As a result, unless the station being worked is using a call sign prefix that is assigned to another country or state (sometimes special event stations do this!), or the prefix has been reassigned (KS6 for instance is now a California prefix but there are still stations in American Samoa using that prefix) HyperLog will correctly identify the state or country. In the event the inevitable happens, you can pop-up a window and scroll through a list of countries and states until you find the one that fits the station being worked (see the topic "Handling Extraneous call signs"). Once selected, this country will override the automatic country selection func- tion. The program also provides several windows of statistics on the Worked/Confirmed status of countries as well as country and U.S.A. State totals by band, mode and mixed mode totals for all 16 bands and 8 modes. By having this information immediately available with the press of a key or two, you can quickly determine if you need a particular country or state for an award or endorsement while tuning around the bands. A built in ten minute timer with on screen countdown clock is an exclusive for HyperLog! You don't have to wonder when you last I.D.ed with this feature enabled. It will always notify you with an alarm when it is time to I.D. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 1 HyperLog As of Version 2.0, HyperLog offers Packet Radio support. This support includes DX PacketCluster support where HyperLog will monitor the PacketCluster watching for DX announcements. When it sees one, it does a high speed database search based on criteria you enter in the SETUP program to determine if you need the country/state listed. If you need it, HyperLog loads the spot in a scrolling window, and emits a distinctive chime to let you know a spot has arrived that you should check. After opening the Spot Window, if you decide to work the station in the spot, you can simply hit enter and your radio will be set to the spot frequency automatically! In addition, when you finish working the station, you simply press a key combination to return to the frequency you were on previously. This really Makes DXing easy! Of course, to QSY the radio, it must be interfaced to your computer and be one supported by HyperLog. A couple of other new features for Version 2.0 are database browsing and report browsing features. The database browser allows you to scroll through your entire database and edit or delete any contact you desire. Gone is the "eight at a time" previous contacts display of past versions. Now, if there are more that eight previous contacts, you simply drop down in the edit window and use the up/down - PgUp/PgDn keys to scroll through and edit any of the entries. The report browser allows "printing to screen" capabilities in that it will read a report created on disk by HyperLog and allow the user to scroll through as well as find any data in the report. A real handy feature is the Net/RoundTable mode. This mode allows you to tell the program to start recording call signs, name and QTH data from the contacts you enter (or enter directly into the Net/RoundTable system) and display this in a scrolling window on screen. This lets you easily keep track of check-ins if you are a net control station or provide an easy to see reference as to who is in a roundta- ble discussion. These contacts can be sorted by call sign or QTH for your convenience. Overall, HyperLog has been designed to be easy to use, intuitive and to give you the features needed to make log- keeping and DXing more pleasurable! ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 2 HyperLog INTRODUCTION A. System Requirements HyperLog is designed to work on any IBM PC or compatible with a minimum of 512K of ram FREE and a hard disk. Version 2.0 no longer supports floppy disk machines as there is just not enough storage to operate effectively. The program will operate on any standard 80 column monitor/adapter system (MONO, CGA, EGA, VGA, HERCULES). If you have 640K of ram or extended/expanded memory, it is possible to speed up disk data access times significantly using a disk cache program. There are a number of these in the public domain which are certainly worth considering. Ram disks are another way of speeding up data access, howev- er, using them may be dangerous. If a power glitch comes through the system it's possible to lose information you have already keyed in and even possible to corrupt the contact master file by unknowingly copying a corrupted file from the ram disk back to the floppy or hard disk, over- writing the good master. With good disk cache buffer pro- grams on the market today (one is available from PC Magazine Utilities, DCACHE, 10-11-88 issue), I do not recommend you run HyperLog on a ram disk. An 80 column printer is also required to print the various reports that are available. It should be able to print in "Condensed" mode. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 3 HyperLog INTRODUCTION B. Files Supplied/Created This Shareware version of HyperLog, when unpacked, contains the following files: HYPERLOG.EXE - This is the master program file. The program is started with this file by typing HYPERLOG. HYPERLOG.OVR - This is the overlay file for HyperLog. It contains additional program code. COUNTRY.PBF - This is the country data file. It contains the prefix, country name, latitude and longi- tude coordinates, and the QSL information for all countries and states. ASSIGN.PBF - This is an array which is used to determine the country from the call sign. This file is loaded into memory at start-up. SETUP.EXE - This is the setup program file. It is used to input your latitude and longitude coordi- nates, set up defaults, select printer port, etc. HYPERLOG.DOC - This is the documentation (this file) for HyperLog. ORDER.FRM - This is an order form to use if you are ordering by mail. The following files are created the first time HyperLog or Setup is run. NAMESRT.PBF - This file is used to read the country file in country name order for several of the reports. PFXSRT.PBF - This file is used to read the country file in prefix order for several of the reports. PICKLIST.DAT - This file is used with the Extraneous Prefix function to scroll through the complete coun- try/state database. CONFIG.REC - This file contains the configuration informa- tion keyed into SETUP. HYPERLOG.DAT - This file is the master contact file. HYPERLOG.IX - This file is the master contact index file. MASTOTL.PBF - This file is the QSL total file. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 4 HyperLog INTRODUCTION C. Registration Registering your copy of HyperLog couldn't be easier. All that is required is to call our 800 number and give us your name, callsign, and credit card information. We will then give you a serial number that will "register" the program. The cost is $ 44.95. If you don't have a credit card, and want us to ship a copy to you, send a check or money order for $44.95 plus $5.00 shipping and handling ($49.95 total) to our address as listed at the top of this document. For your convenience when ordering by mail, we have enclosed an order form you can fill out and print on your printer. The name of the file is ORDER.FRM. Prior to registration, the following features are either disabled or not fully implemented. 1. Conversion of old HyperLog version files to new database system. (disabled) 2. Transmission on packet (only receive). (disabled) 3. Posting of a DX spot on packet. (disabled) 4. Setting of Freq/Band/Mode on radio. Will still read radio information. (disabled) 5. QSY radio using DX spot information. (disabled) Registration will activate all features immediately in the program. Once you have registered, all future versions of HyperLog that you obtain will be automatically "Registered". This does not necessarily apply to other programs under development by HyperSoft such as HyperLog for Windows and HyperLog Plus. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 5 HyperLog 2. INSTALLATION To install hyperlog, make a separate sub-directory on your hard disk, change to that directory, and then copy the distribution file, HYLOG2.EXE, into this new directory. Type HYLOG2 to start the file extraction process. The file is a self extracting archive and will de-compress all files it contains into your new directory. Make sure you DO NOT have any files from a previous version of HyperLog (all versions below 2.0) in the same directory! HyperLog 2.0 is NOT compatible with ANY files from versions prior to 2.0. If you have registered your product and have an old version of HyperLog (prior to 2.0), copy the data file (HYPERLOG.PBF) to this new directory at this time. It will be converted during startup of the new version. Now, proceed with the installation as outlined in the next sections of the installation documentation. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 6 HyperLog INSTALLATION A. Running SETUP SETUP MUST be run once before HyperLog is run. It creates the configuration file that HyperLog needs to operate. If it is not run, HyperLog will fail with a File Missing error. SETUP is pretty self explanatory. It allows you to input the start-up modes, band, power etc. for the Autopilot function and is also where you will input your latitude and longitude information as well as other options that control how HyperLog works. Remember, help is available for each input by pressing F1 when the cursor is on the input field you have a question about. Your local latitude and longitude is used as an input to the great circle calculator which determines bearing and dis- tance information to a country or state. Your local lati- tude and longitude information can usually be found on most maps or in an atlas. When you start SETUP, a screen will appear with a short reminder at the top and a list of options at the bottom. The first option is your LOCAL latitude. Key in the lati- tude coordinates for your QTH. If you do not know your coordinates, press the F1 key to see a list of cities around the world and their coordinates. If your QTH is close to one of the cities listed, use its coordinates. Otherwise, you should look up your coordinates in an atlas or a road map. Next you are asked the latitude direction of your QTH. If you are in the United States, this is the letter "N" for North. This signifies the latitude coordinate is in the northern hemisphere. If you are south of the Equator, then you would enter an "S" here. The next field is the longitude for your QTH. Enter your longitude from your atlas or map. Again, pressing F1 will bring up the list of sample cities and their coordinates. After longitude, is longitude direction. This can be either an "E" or a "W". Again, if you are in the United States, this will be a "W". If you are located in Japan or Germany, for instance, you would enter an "E". ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 7 HyperLog After inputting your coordinates, you are asked the time difference in hours your QTH is from UTC (GMT). Again, if you are in the United States, this information can be ob- tained by listening to WWV on 5,10,15 or 20 Mhz. and sub- tracting your local time from the time given on WWV (WWVH in Hawaii). For instance if you live in New York City and WWV gives the time as 1100 coordinated universal time, and your local time is 0700, then the difference would be 4 hours. You would type a 4 in the field. If you live elsewhere, press the F1 key to see examples of various time differences around the world to give you an idea of what to enter. The next field is Label Pop-up. If you print labels and you want the option to print a label whenever you put an S in the QSL Sent field, enter a Y here. Otherwise, enter an N. Next is the Grayline field. This field allows you to enter the path and program name of a Grayline (or other program) and call that program from within HyperLog by pressing ALT-G. Press F1 while the cursor is on Grayline for an example. After the Grayline field, the cursor moves to the Band prompt. Enter the band you do most of your operating on. HyperLog will use this as the default band when it starts up. For a list of valid bands, press the F1 key. Of course, if you have a supported radio and it is on and interfaced, HyperLog reads the current Freq/Mode information, calculates band, and displays that instead. Next is the Power prompt. Enter the amount of power in watts you normally use for transmission. Select your radio from the list if you have an interface hooked up for use. If your radio is not on the list or you will not be using the interface, select "Z" for none. Answer the rest of the questions relating to COM port, baud rate and, if using COM3 or COM4, interrupt numbers. Next is the type of date format for HyperLog to use. Press- ing F1 will list the choices which are M for MM/DD/YY, D for DD/MM/YY and Y for YY/MM/DD. Enter a M, D, or Y. Next, enter the primary mode you tend to operate on most of the time. This can be any of the eight supported by Hyper- Log. These are: SSB,CW,FM,PKT,TTY,AMT,SST and FST. Mode2 is the next prompt. You should enter the second most used mode you operate on. Again, it can be any of the eight supported modes. This is the lower mode displayed in the Bands Worked/Confirmed window on the lower right corner of the main screen. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 8 HyperLog Comp. ON is a prompt for the DECIMAL code to turn on con- densed print on your printer. Most IBM compatible printers use a 15 for this feature. However, if you know yours uses a different code, enter it here. Otherwise, leave the 15 present. If you have a wide carriage printer enter a 0 if you do not want the printout to be in compressed form. Comp. OFF is the opposite of Comp. ON. It turns compressed mode off. If you know your code is different from 18 then enter the value here. Again, if you have a wide carriage printer and do not want to print in compressed mode, enter a 0 here. The next prompt is WAS. This toggle allows you to suppress the pop-up that asks you to select the correct state anytime you work a US station (except CA.). If you do not want to track WAS information, enter an N here. Otherwise, enter a Y. The next prompt is Autopilot selection. If you enter a "Y" here, HyperLog will start up with Autopilot ON. This means the program will continuously update the date and time and will use your default band, mode and power settings. If you enter an "N" here, you will have to manually input the date time and all other fields. Normally you would leave this a "Y". If you have old contacts to enter, you can toggle Autopilot off while running the program to enter them and then toggle it back on to switch to real time. The Addr/Remark prompt controls whether the two address field prompts and the Remarks field prompt pop-up every time a contact is made or whether they are called up on demand when needed. Enter a "Y" to have them pop-up for each contact, or an "N" for demand only. N/R sort is the sort option for the Net/Roundtable mode. If you want to sort by Call sign, enter a "1". If you want to sort by QTH enter the number "2". If you want the entries to be listed in order as logged, enter a "3". UTC is pretty self explanatory. If you want to keep your log in UTC (GMT) time leave the "Y" in the prompt. If you want to use local time enter an "N" here. If UTC is se- lected, DO NOT set your DOS clock to UTC time. HyperLog will handle all time changes from DOS (which should be set to your local time) to UTC. Ptr Port is also pretty easy. Enter a "1","2" or "3" to indicate the parallel port you are using for your printer. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 9 HyperLog The Multi-Popup is to set whether the window that shows a list of possible countries/states pops up after the call sign is entered or when the QTH field is about to be ac- cessed. Enter a Y to have it pop-up immediately after the Call sign is entered or a N if you want it to pop-up just before QTH. One-up is the prompt to select the label type you want to use when printing labels. The options are to use either One up labels or three up labels. See Printing Labels later in the manual for descriptions of compatible labels. Beep allows you to turn the beep off when certain screens display by putting an "N" here. Windows allows you to speed up the window display for all windows and bypass some of the special effects used in the the program (Exploding, curtain open, blinds etc.). AM Mode allows you to select AM as a valid mode instead of FST. If you don't work FST but do use AM, then enter a Y here. Next is the Packet Radio Prompt. This is a fairly complex screen and will require a bit of explanation. To start with, if you don't use Packet, just leave the prompt set to N. Otherwise, enter a Y and a window will open that shows two smaller windows side by side. The one on the left is Help, the one on the right is where you will enter your parameters. The first prompt is your COM port selection. Enter the COM port you have your TNC hooked up to. CAUTION! Make sure the port does not conflict with the port you use for your radio interface (if any). In other words, DON'T USE BOTH PORTS 1 AND 3 OR 2 AND 4 TOGETHER. You can use 1 and 2 or 3 and 4 together with no conflicts assuming standard interrupts and I/O addressing. HyperLog uses COM port addressing of COM1- 3F8, COM2-3E8, COM3-2F8, COM4-2E8. Interrupt #'s are standard - 4,3,4,3. These are standard values and what most serial boards default to. After you select your port, set the baud rate to the TNC interface rate. Then set parity to N(none, E(even, or O(odd. Finally, set the number of stop bits to finish up the COM port part of the setup. Next is the band/ mode matrix to tell HyperLog what band and mode you wish to be notified for when a DX Spot comes in. Enter a Y in the appropriate block if you want to check for that particular band/ mode combination. If you don't ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 10 HyperLog want to be notified if a spot comes in for a particular band or mode ( say you don't have an antenna for 160) then enter an N in that block. After the band/ mode matrix, enter the type of alert you want HyperLog to watch for. If you don't want any alerts you can enter a D here. To alert for ALL spots, enter an E. If you want HyperLog to alert you when a spot comes in you need for DXCC Mixed Mode enter an X. If you only want HyperLog to look at the band the spot comes in for enter a B. If you want to check all bands but only one mode then enter an M. Finally, enter a S if you want to check specifically for the band & mode of the spot. Next if you want to be notified not only if you haven't WORKED the country in the Spot but also if you haven't CONFIRMED the country then enter a Y here. The next three prompts tell HyperLog how your PacketCluster formats its DX Spots. The default is typical of most all PacketClusters but if it is incorrect, you can specify the lead in text (DX de usually) and the word number for frequency and call. It is important that this be correct so HyperLog can distinguish a DX Spot and act accordingly. The last prompt is Printer Initialization String. Most people will not have a use for this prompt. It was added mainly for control of laser printer page offsets. If you don't know what to put here, then you probably don't need to use it. Leave it blank and press Enter. The final part of SETUP is the window showing all the bands and the associated frequencies that are to be used as de- faults. This window pops up after pressing return while in the Printer Initialization String. You can set the frequen- cy for all bands allowed by HyperLog. These are the frequen- cies the program uses when you start the program and when you change bands. Simply use the arrow keys to position the cursor over the appropriate field and enter the frequency you desire. When finished, press the ESC key to save & exit. You will now be back to the first prompt on the main screen. If all entries are as you want them press the ESC key again and all changes will be recorded. You will then be returned to DOS. If you have registered your product and you want to convert an old data file from a version prior to 2.0, proceed with the next section. Otherwise, type HYPERLOG and you should see the opening screen. Press any key and the program will start. Thats it. You're ready to go! ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 11 HyperLog INSTALLATION B. Converting your old datafile IMPORTANT!! Make sure you keep backup copies of your old file HYPERLOG.PBF and, if you have used HyperLog 2.0 and entered contacts in it prior to Registering it, make sure you make a backup copy of HYPERLOG.DAT and HYPERLOG.IX from the Version 2.0 directory. The conversion should go Ok, but it is better to be safe. If you are a previous user of HyperLog and have a data file named HYPERLOG.PBF, you can convert that file to the new format (once you have registered HyperLog 2.0 or higher) by doing the following: if you haven't already done so, copy your old data file (HYPERLOG.PBF) to your new directory. Don't delete your old files until you are sure the new program is working correctly and all of your data is intact. Next, start HyperLog by typing HYPERLOG CONVERT. This will begin the conversion process. A pop-up window will show you the progress as the program runs. When the conversion process ends, it will take you to the main HyperLog window. Thats it. HyperLog is ready to go. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 12 HyperLog GETTING STARTED The following pages explain the various modes and procedures to follow while entering information in HyperLog. Always remember that help is available by pressing the F1 key. In most cases the help provided should be sufficient to answer your question as HyperLog is very easy to operate. This ease of use and the logical layout of the user interface was one of the key design goals of HyperLog. All mode/function changes were keyed to the alternate key plus the first letter of the function (i.e. ALT A to toggle autopilot mode on/off) whenever possible. The Date, Time, Call Sign, Sent, Received, Band and mode fields are checked for valid data. Valid data is defined as: Date - Valid date, checks for leap year. Time - Valid time (0000-2359). Call sign - Only characters, numbers, forward slash (/) or backslash (\) . Sent - 21 (or 211) to 59 (or 599). Received - same as sent. Band - Valid bands are: 160,80,40,30,20,17,15,12,10, 6,144,220,432,12G,23G,OSC. Mode - Valid modes are: SSB,CW,FM,PKT,TTY,AMT, SST, and FST/AM. If you are going to be printing address labels, you will want to be diligent in recording the Address of the contact in one or both Address fields and make sure you have the city and country or state along with any appropriate zip codes in the QTH field. These can be input when the station is worked or, if the data is not available then, input later using the Edit Previous Contact mode to edit the contact and add the information. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 13 HyperLog GETTING STARTED A. Autopilot Mode ALT A is the key sequence to toggle Autopilot mode. When ALT "A" is pressed and Autopilot is ON, it will be turned OFF. If it is OFF then it will be turned ON. Autopilot mode is designed to alleviate a lot of extra work by automatically entering data that frequently remains the same for several contacts. What is the point of keying in the date, time, band, mode, power, and frequency as you continue to work stations on the same band using the same mode at the same power level and the same frequency? Why should you have to enter the date and time when you have a perfectly good clock ticking away in your machine? Why not have these inputs done automatically for you unless you specifically want to change one or all of them? They can be, by using the Autopilot. Autopilot mode was de- signed to work like most of us operate. Most of us tend to make more than one contact per band per session. Most of us tend to use just one mode of communication (SSB or CW usually). Most of us do not change our transmitting power very often. When Autopilot mode is ON (the status is shown at the bottom of the screen) the Autopilot automatically inputs the date, time, band, mode, power, and frequency when a contact is logged. These inputs (except date and time) come from the configuration record created during installation by the SETUP program. When HyperLog starts, it reads the configu- ration information from the "CONFIG.REC" file on the disk. After that, if you change, say, Mode from SSB to CW it remains CW until you change it again or quit. Date and time information is derived from the DOS date and time with an offset applied if you selected to use UTC time. This is why it is important to make sure your clock is properly set before you start HyperLog. You should NOT set your DOS clock to UTC. Set it to your local time. HyperLog handles time changes from local to UTC and back again internally. This is why you had to input the time difference between your local time and UTC during the installation. As you are entering data, the cursor will skip over the Autopilot controlled fields. These fields do not require any entry or intervention by you. You can, however, elect to change the information in those fields (except date and time) by pressing the appropriate key combinations. These key combinations are displayed when help (F1) is pressed. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 14 HyperLog The date and time fields can only be entered if Autopilot is off. If Autopilot is on and the date and time are incor- rect, you should exit the program using the Operating System Gateway (ALT O) and set the DOS date and/or time. When finished, type exit to return to the program. When Autopilot is OFF none of the above happens. The cursor will stop at each field for data entry. Date and time will require manual entry. They will not be automatically input from the DOS clock. This mode is mainly provided to allow you to enter contacts from a paper log or from anoth- er programs printout. Otherwise, Autopilot ON is the way to go! ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 15 HyperLog GETTING STARTED B. Help System F1 is the Help key. The help system in HyperLog is context sensitive and uses pop-up three dimensional windows to display its information to the user. It is available during most program operations. When running SETUP, pressing F1 at any of the user input prompts will give you suggested entries and/or examples of the type of information requested for this field. For instance, when the cursor is sitting on the input for lati- tude, if you press F1, you will be shown a listing of var- ious cities around the world with their latitude and longi- tude coordinates. In contrast, when running HyperLog pressing F1 will display a list of all commands available for the area you are in at the time (Contact Entry, Edit Previous Contacts, File or Report Browser). These commands control the operation of HyperLog. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 16 HyperLog GETTING STARTED C. Contact Entry When Autopilot mode is on, the cursor will start in the call sign field. Enter the call sign of the station. If the station is not in his call sign area (i.e. operating portable) enter the portable designation so the prefix engine can find the proper country. For example, if you work AH8B and he is in Georgia, enter AH8B/W4 or W4\AH8B (if you are logging portable stations using the new ITU designation). Make sure you enter the complete prefix for portable operation. DO NOT enter, for instance, AH8B/4. The "/4" does not identify a valid country or state. Use "/W4" so the program knows the station is in the W4 call area. Also, be careful of the slash character. If using the ITU convention of portable prefix first then call sign, use the backslash (\) character. If logging the portable station the conventional way, use the slash (/). The prefix engine will detect the "/" or "\" character in the call and know this call sign is in a different location than normal assignment would suggest. It then looks for the correct prefix after the "/" or before the "\" character. After the call is entered, the program searches the database for any possible previous contacts and also retrieves the country/state information from the database. If any previ- ous contacts were found they will be displayed in the window in the middle of the screen with the most recent contact at the top (if a complete call sign was entered). If the call sign prefix relates to only one country, that county's bearing/distance information and name will appear in the box near the bottom of the screen. If there is more than one country assigned to this prefix, and you have selected Y for the Multi-Popup option in Setup a window will pop-up and list all possible country/state choices that apply. By moving the highlighted bar over the correct country/state, you can select the one for the current contact. If the window does not list the correct country/state, (this some- times happens with special call signs which violate interna- tional call sign allocation schemes or older prefixes) press the ESC key. This will bring up a scrolling window exactly as if you pressed the ALT X key combination. You can then select the country/state that fits this particular call sign. More information is available about this feature in the chapter titled "Handling Extraneous call signs". If you enter anything in the call sign field except let- ters, numbers, a "/" , a "\" or a space, an error prompt will appear and you will have to correct the entry before continuing. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 17 HyperLog When searching for previous contacts, the program makes exact matches to what you enter as a call sign. Therefore, if you enter only JA then all previous contacts that START with JA will be displayed in the window. If you enter VK4 then all VK4's will be displayed. This allows you, among other things, to quickly look for a call when you hear someone you know, but can't remember all of his/her call sign. You only remember he/she is a ZL1! If the program detects that you entered a partial call, the cursor will be returned to the start of the Call Sign field rather than advanced to the Sent field. The detection system watches to see if you enter a call sign that is less than 3 characters in length. If so, the cursor will be returned to the start of the call sign field unless the three letter call is M1C, RZ0 or JY1. If you enter a call that is less than four characters the program assumes you are simply doing a look-up operation and not trying to enter a valid call sign. One more item about entering call signs. When you want to look up a call and you originally entered the call as a "portable" call (i.e. WA4OLP/JA2) DO NOT include the port- able designation along with the call. HyperLog is designed to find ALL occurrences of a call sign regardless of whether it was logged as portable or not. Consequently, it strips out the portable designations to build the index key. This means it WILL NOT find an occurrence of a call that was entered with a portable designation if you try to look up the call using the portable designation. To find the call in the example above, you would simply enter WA4OLP. After the call sign has been entered and the Enter key pressed, the cursor will advance to the Sent signal report box (SNT). This field has a special action based on what you enter (or, more properly, what you do not enter!). If you leave the field blank and press the Enter key, the cursor moves back to the call sign field. This feature was implemented to allow you to answer the question "I wonder where that guy is" while you are sitting at the radio and just tuning around to see what's on the band. You can easily enter calls and check the country and/or previous contacts with a station or just see if you have that country confirmed without having to manually move the cursor back from the Sent field each time you want to look up another call sign. Normally, however, you would enter the RS(T) of the station you are in contact with. In this case, the report is checked for accuracy and if an incorrect entry was made, a prompt will alert you of the error. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 18 HyperLog The cursor is then advanced to the next field, received signal report (RCV). The RS from the Sent field (SNT) is duplicated here to cut down on keystrokes. Frequently the RS is the same for both Sent and Received reports. If the Received is different from the Sent then enter the RS the station transmits to you about the strength and quality of your signal. On either field, SNT or RCV, if you enter a report less than 21 (211 for CW) or greater than 59 (599 for cw) an error prompt will appear. Note: Signal re- ports less than 21 are not accepted by the ARRL as a valid QSO. A readability, "R", value of 1 says "Unreadable". If the station is "Unreadable" then you cannot work him! Consequently a readability, "R", value of 1 is not accepted by HyperLog. After the sent/received RS(T) is entered, the cursor will advance to the name field, skipping over band, frequency, mode and power if Autopilot is on. If you want to change any of these skipped fields you can do so by pressing the ALT key plus the appropriate alphabetic key. The various modes and commands are displayed in a pop-up window by pressing the F1 key. They are ALT "B" for band, ALT "F" for frequency, ALT "M" for mode and ALT "P" for power. By pressing one of these key combinations, the cursor will go to the appropriate field and allow you to enter the new data. After entry, the cursor returns to the field you were in when you invoked the ALT key combination. If your radio is interfaced and on, entering an new frequency or mode will cause the radio to change to the frequency or mode entered. When the cursor lands on the name prompt, a window opens below the main entry line and the cursor goes to position 1 of the field. This window allows the full length of the name field (20 characters) to be used for input. This windowing method was chosen to allow reasonable length fields but still have a single line display on screen for all information entered. At the name prompt enter any information you desire. It is not validity checked in any way. Usually you would want to enter the name of the contact station. Keep in mind, if you choose to print address labels, the data from this field is used to print the name line on the label. After completing the name entry, the cursor advances to the QTH field unless you selected N for Multi-Popup in the Setup program. In that case if the country/ state can't be determined from the call sign, a window will pop-up allowing ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 19 HyperLog you to select the correct one. Once you have selected the correct country/state, if applicable, the QTH field pops up. Only ten characters are displayed when the window is not open for space conservation. The QTH field is 30 characters long. If you will be printing labels, the program will look in this field for the City, State and Zip code information. If you have worked this station before and entered QTH info, that info will be copied here from the previous contact. As an added feature, If the contact you are entering is for a station you have worked and logged before, the QTH you entered for that contact will be extracted from the previous contact and automatically input in the QTH field here. If you have not worked this station before, the country or state name assigned to this call sign will be input for you. This saves a lot of keystrokes! This automatic entering of data also applies to the Address, QTH, and Remarks fields if a previous contact exists for this station. After entering the QTH, the next field the cursor lands on is determined by your response to the Addr/Remark prompt in the setup program, SETUP. If you put a "Y" in that prompt indicating you wanted the address and remarks fields to pop-up automatically during contact entry, then the next three fields will be Address1, Address2 and Remarks. Other- wise, if you put an "N" in the Addr/Remark prompt the next field will be "S", indicating QSL Sent. In this case the Address and Remarks fields are accessible on demand with the appropriate key combinations as listed when F1 is pressed. When using the label print feature, the program will look in both the Address1 and Address2 field for the actual address of the contact and use any data if finds for the Address lines on the label. Usually you would want to put in the street address or P.O. box number in these fields. The Remarks field, a 30 character field, can hold any data you would like to retain about the contact such as equip- ment, antenna, schedules etc. The QSL sent "S" and received "R" fields are the last two fields of data entry. These fields can take the value of "Y" , "N" or be left blank meaning Y-Yes, N-No, Blank- No. If left blank, an "N" is inserted by the program. In addition, the "S" field will also accept an "L". An "L" in the QSL sent field tells the system you want to print a label for this contact at a later date using the Label Print ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 20 HyperLog utility (see the chapter titled Labels ). If you put a Y in the sent field, a prompt asking if you want to print a label now will appear. If you want to print a label, respond with a "Y" to the prompt and you will be guided through the prompts for printing a label for this contact. A "Y" in the "R" or QSL Received field, signifies you have already re- ceived a card for this station. This will trigger a "C" ( for Confirmed) in the Bands Worked window for this Country/Band/Mode combination. If you leave either or both of these fields blank, it signifies to the system that you do not want to print a label and you have not yet received a card from this station. When the Enter key is pressed with the cursor in the QSL "R" field, a window will pop-up and ask if you want to save the record just entered. Respond with a Y if you want to add the record to the database. If you respond with a Y, the contact will be displayed in the previous contact window. The only other time a contact will be permanently logged to disk is if, after filling in the mandatory fields of Date, Time, Call sign, Band, Mode, Sent and Received signal reports, you press the F10 key. This will log the contact to disk and bypass the Name, Address, QSL and Remarks field prompts. It does not matter what is in the QSL "R" field. It can be blank or have a "Y" or "N". Data is only written if the Enter key is pressed at this field. Pressing control and the left or right arrow keys or control and the "F" or "A" key to move the cursor right or left by field will not generate a write to disk. Before the data is actually written to disk, the record is checked to see if any of the "Required Fields" (date, time, call, sent, rcvd, band and mode) are blank or contain in- valid data. If a problem is found with any field a prompt will appear indicating what is wrong. You will then have to correct the appropriate field before the record will be written to disk. You can verify the contact was written to disk by looking at the Previous Contacts window. The contact is displayed in this window after it has been recorded in the master file on disk. After the first contact has been entered, all data in the required fields entered for that contact is still displayed. The data for Name, Address1, Address 2 and Remarks is cleared. If you are entering from a paper log of some ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 21 HyperLog type, this feature lets you always see the last contact entered. Also, if the next contact has some of the same information (signal reports for instance) you just need to press enter at the field and the previous data will be used for the current record. If you press any key except the left or right arrow key or the Enter key while in a field with previous data, the previous information will be cleared for that field. For example, if you have entered a contact prior to the current one and the signal report sent was a "59" then when the cursor lands on the "Snt" field if the current contact is also "59" then just press enter to keep the "59". If the current contact is "57" then when you first enter the "5" the rest of the field is cleared. This works the same for all fields in normal entry mode. If Autopilot is OFF all the above is the same with the following exceptions. The date and time are not read from DOS. You will be re- quired to input a valid date and time. Also the cursor will not skip any fields. All fields will require an entry from you even if it is just a press of the Enter key including both Address fields and the Remarks field regardless of the setting of the Addr/Rem pop-up field in the setup program. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 22 HyperLog GETTING STARTED D. Editing previous contacts ALT E selects Edit mode. When one or more previous contacts are displayed in the previous contacts window, you can edit any data in any field of the contact. After pressing ALT "E" the cursor drops into the previous contacts window and the first (if more than one) contact is highlighted. If there is more than one previous con- tact, you can move the highlighted bar up and down to select the desired contact by using the up and down arrow keys. If there are a LOT of contacts, PgUp/PgDn will scroll a page at a time through all the contacts. Once the contact is highlighted, press the enter key and the Edit Window will pop-up displaying all fields from the record. To change any information, just type over what is currently in the field. If you want to change the country/state, however, you will have to do this by pressing ALT-X and highlighting the desired entry then pressing the enter key. To SAVE the edited record, you MUST press the control key (CTL) and then press the Enter key while holding the control (CTL) key down. Pressing the ESC (escape) key will abandon any changes you made. If you want to delete a record, just highlight the appropriate record to delete and press the ALT key and "D" key. A message will pop-up in a window and prompt you to make sure this is what you want to do. If you respond with a "Y" then the highlighted record will be deleted. This is a permanent delete! You can't recall the record again so be sure you have selected the contact you want to delete! There is no "Undo" feature here! When all changes have been made to the previous contact, press the Esc key to exit Edit Previous Contacts mode. On a technical note, when you delete a contact, two things happen. First, the contact pointer in the B+ tree index file is removed. Second the actual record in the master data file has a field set aside to indicate to the file manager this record has been deleted. The file manager will consequently put this record number in a deleted record pool. When a new record is added to the database, the file manager first checks this deleted record pool to see if any records reside in it. If there is a record available, the file manager allocates that record to the new entry rather than expanding the file unnecessarily. This is a nice space saving feature. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 23 HyperLog GETTING STARTED E. Using the ten minute I.D. timer ALT T starts a ten minute timer which, if started at the beginning of a QSO, will aid you in complying with the FCC requirement of identifying your station at ten minute inter- vals. When ten minutes have elapsed an alarm will sound to alert you it is time to I.D. The timer will reset itself after the alarm and continue to time ten minute intervals until turned off or you exit the program. To activate the timer, press the key combination ALT "T". This is a toggle command. If the timer is on, it is turned off. If it is off, it is turned on. When activated, the status message at the bottom right of the screen changes from OFF to ON and a countdown clock appears to the right of this message. The countdown clock starts at ten minutes and counts down to zero. The timer can be reset at any time by pressing the ALT "T" key combination twice, toggling the timer off and then back on. Usually, once started, it does not need resetting until you end your QSO. For those interested, the timer is simply a variable that is loaded with a count of 10,920. The routine is then "Hooked" into the timer tick user interrupt, 1C hex, and every time the PC's hardware timer ticks (approximately 18.2 times per second) the count in the variable is decremented by 1. When the variable reaches zero, the routine calls the Chime routine to ring the bell. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 24 HyperLog GETTING STARTED F. Country Contacts ALT C toggles Country Contacts Mode ON or OFF. If ON, it is turned OFF. It OFF, it is turned ON. When Country Contacts Mode is ON, and you enter a call sign or a valid prefix, ALL previous contacts for the COUNTRY represented by the call sign or prefix will be displayed in the Previous Contact window. This is a bit different from normal operation where all previous contacts matching the call sign entered are dis- played. This mode is useful when gathering cards to send to the ARRL for a DXCC award or endorsement. For instance, if you turn on Country Contacts Mode and type JA, all contacts for Japan, regardless of their prefix when worked, will appear in the Previous Contacts window. This includes all stations operating portable you may have worked (assuming they were logged using one of the two portable designators ie. JA\ or /JA) and any contacts tagged to Japan using the ALT X method. As a reminder, since the call sign entered here must define a country, the prefix must be complete such that a single country can be determined from what you enter. For instance entering a "J" is not sufficient to determine a single country. It could be Japan or Jordan. If you do not enter a complete prefix, an error will occur and a prompt will pop-up. Also, there is a routine in the Utility/Print menu which allows you to produce a printed listing of all contacts for a particular country. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 25 HyperLog GETTING STARTED G. UTC / Local time selection ALT L switches between Local and UTC time. This toggle is provided to allow you to choose the time you want to keep your log in. Using UTC (GMT) makes the most sense as no time conversions are necessary on QSL cards. Schedules also become easier to interpret since you don't have to convert one local time to another. 1300 UTC is 1300 UTC anywhere in the world. 1300 Central Standard Time is only 1300 in the Central Time Zone of the United States of America! Still, if you prefer, the feature is there to record the log in your local time. You can select your preference, UTC or LOCAL time, during program installation or any time after by running the set-up program, SETUP, from the DOS prompt. If you run this pro- gram using the Operating System Gateway however, the changes will not affect the operation until HyperLog is exited normally and then restarted. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 26 HyperLog GETTING STARTED H. Rebuilding the Master file and indexes ALT I allows you to recreate the indexes used to access the records in the master file and recover from some damage to your master file, should this occur. This should not normally have to be done. However, if a power failure occurs during an write operation and you do not have a power backup feature, there is a possibility of corrupting the Master file or one of the indexes. If your previous contacts do not belong with the call sign you are entering in the Entry window, press ALT "I" to recreate the index for the Master file. This should take care of the problem. As with all valuable data, you should always keep a CURRENT backup copy. We strongly SUGGEST this. The files that should be backed up are the COUNTRY.PBF file and the HYPER- LOG.DAT file. According to Murphy's Law, If it can happen it WILL happen (eventually). If the Master file were to become corrupt from a power surge or outage (a small possi- bility) rebuilding may not recover your data. You would have to copy the master file from your latest backup. If you do not have a backup copy......well, you know where you are then! Your only recourse would be to print out as much data as possible (assuming the file header is intact and you are not bombing out of the program) and then delete the Master file, "HYPERLOG.DAT", and the Master Index file, "HYPERLOG.IX". You would then have to rekey all data from your printouts (if any). If you ever have to use your backup and you just backed up the HYPERLOG.DAT and COUNTRY.PBF files, you should follow this sequence to get everything running again. 1. Start HyperLog as you normally would. You will see a window pop-up and the rebuild process will inform you of its progress. When it finishes proceed to step 2. 2. When the rebuild finishes, press ALT U and select #5. This will regenerate the QSL data from the data file. When the two operations above finish, you will have restored your data and QSL statistics to the level of your backup. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 27 HyperLog GETTING STARTED I. Operating System Gateway ALT O selects the Operating System Gateway. It is a way to get to DOS without exiting the program permanently. It is selected by pressing the ALT key and the "O" key together. It allows you to exit from HyperLog to do a DOS function or execute another program. As of Version 2.0, HyperLog swaps itself out of main memory (all but about 25K) to give you as much memory as necessary to run another program. This is handy for such things as setting your DOS clock if you forgot to do this prior to program start. If you have EMS or XMS memory available, HyperLog will use it to hold its swap file. If not, HyperLog will swap itself to disk. WARNING!!!! DO NOT RUN A TSR TYPE PROGRAM WHILE IN THE DOS WINDOW. IF YOU DO, HYPERLOG CAN NOT RESTART ITSELF! To return to HyperLog where you left off, make sure you are in the directory that Hyperlog is in and simply type EXIT at the DOS prompt. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 28 HyperLog GETTING STARTED J. Displaying QSL statistics ALT Q opens a window which shows DXCC information for all bands and modes as well as a mixed mode total, grand total, and total countries available. This window is laid out in a spreadsheet type format and is read by scanning vertically for the band of interest and horizontally for the mode of interest and reading the values at the intersect point. These values represent the number of countries worked and the number of countries confirmed for this particular band and mode combination. At a glance, you can see if you have enough countries confirmed on any particular band or mode for a DXCC award or endorsement. DXCC information is accumulated as you work stations in different countries/states and is automatically updated when a contact is edited in such a way that the change would affect the statistics. The mixed mode totals are totals meeting the requirements of the ARRL DXCC Mixed Mode award. It includes the bands 160 through 40, and 20 through 10. 30 meters is not included in this total as it is not accepted by the ARRL for mixed mode totals. The grand totals are the total number of countries worked regardless of band and mode. After viewing the Country statistics if you press the C key, you will be shown a window which is almost identical that displays the WAS statistics accumulated to date. These are read the same as the Country statists. Pressing any other key bypasses the WAS statistics and takes you back to the program. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 29 HyperLog GETTING STARTED K. Displaying Country QSL Statistics ALT W, when pressed, pops up a window showing the worked/confirmed status of the country currently displayed in the location area of the main screen. This status is similar to the Worked/Confirmed status shown in the lower right corner of the main screen except it shows information for ALL bands and modes together on one screen. This allows you to quickly check a country to see if you might need it on a mode or band which is not currently displayed on the main screen in the Worked/Confirmed area. A "W" means you have "Worked" the country and a "C" means a card has been received from that country for the band and mode indicated thus "Confirming" the country. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 30 HyperLog GETTING STARTED L. Handling Extraneous call signs ALT X is a valuable command to remember. When you type in a call sign and press the Enter key, the prefix is decoded and a country/state is displayed which would normally belong to that prefix. For example, JA to JS is the prefix range for Japan. Sometimes, usually the celebration of some event, special call signs will be issued temporarily. Frequently, these call signs do not adhere to the international call sign allocation strategy nor do they start with a "standard" prefix. Occasionally the prefix for a country may change to one that has not been internationally assigned. When this happens, Hyperlog offers you a way to select the correct country/state for the special call sign by selecting the Extraneous call sign mode. This is done by pressing the ALT "X" key combination. When selected, a scrolling window will pop-up on the screen. The data displayed is in alphabetical order by country/state name. You can then scroll through the entire country/state listing using the up and down arrow keys, page up and page down keys, or you can go directly to the country in question by typing the first few letters of the country name. It usually only takes two or three letters before the country is under the highlight bar. Once the correct country/state is under the highlighted bar, when you press return, the highlighted country/state will be selected and applied to the call sign in the Contact Entry window. The window will then close. This feature makes it easy to handle those pesky "special event" call signs that make automatic computer country/state look-up difficult! By the way, the ALT X window will pop-up if you press ESC rather than make a selection when the multiple state/country window pops up. For instance, if you enter WA4OLP, the multi-state window will pop up showing all the states for the W4 call area. If the station is not in this group of states, pressing the ESC key will activate the ALT X window exactly as if you pressed the key combination. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 31 HyperLog GETTING STARTED M. Net/RoundTable Mode ALT N selects Net/RoundTable Mode. It gives the net control operator or participant the ability to log contacts to a "Memory Window" and have these contacts sorted automatically by Call sign or QTH. When a station checks in with traffic for Birmingham, simply use the Up or Down arrow keys to quickly look up the call sign of any station previously checked in from Birmingham! Roundtables are a breeze too. When Net/RoundTable Mode is activated, a window will appear at the bottom of the screen. A prompt will ask if you want to add the current contact to the window. If you respond "Y" then it will be added automatically. In any case, the cursor will be placed in the Net/RoundTable window at the first character position of the Call prompt. You can then manually enter as many calls as you like. Press the Esc key when done. Depending on your choice during installation, the entries will then be sorted either by Call or QTH. From this point on, all contacts logged will automatically be included in the Net/RoundTable window until you close the window. Closing the window Quits Net/RoundTable mode and DELETES ALL ENTRIES! Be sure this is what you intend when you press ALT "N" again to close the window! A prompt will remind you before the command is executed. You can add members directly to the list at any time by pressing CTL "N". These additions are not written to disk. You can delete members by using the Up and Down arrow keys to place the member to delete under the High-Lighted bar and pressing the ALT "D" key. By using the Up and Down arrow keys, you can scroll the list up or down to either view or delete a member. Remember, the list is ordered either by Call or QTH. You selected the sort order you wanted during installation. If you want to change the ordering, you can do so any time by running SETUP from the DOS prompt. Note: You can't manipulate the members while in Edit Previ- ous Contacts mode. Since the same commands are used in both windows, if you are using edit mode and have Net/RoundTable mode active, the default is to let the Up and Down arrow keys and the ALT D sequence to delete a contact/member, work only in the Edit Previous Contacts window. You can, however, scroll the list up and down and delete a highlighted contact from the Contact Entry window. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 32 HyperLog GETTING STARTED N. Utility/Reports ALT U brings up the Utility/Print main menu. HyperLog has all the reports you normally need to keep track of WAS, WAZ, and DXCC information as well as listing out previous con- tacts sorted by call sign, date, band, call sign plus date etc. As a bonus you can print out the country list centered on any latitude and longitude coordinates on the planet and have it sorted by prefix or country name! This is a great way to recoup part or all of the cost of HyperLog. You can generate and sell bearing/distance listings to all your friends without PC's and the listings are centered on their QTH! From the main menu, you can choose to print log information, QSL information, country information, or print labels. A new feature of Version 2.0 is the ability to print to a file and then view that file with HyperLog's Report Browser. Whenever you select a report from the Utility menu, a window pops up and asks if you want to print on the printer. If you respond No, then the report will be spooled to disk and named REPORT.TXT. The "D" option on the Utility menu will then read REPORT.TXT and display it for you in a full window. When you choose the type of data you want to print, another window pops up prompting you for the sort order of the printout you are requesting. The number and type of sort order varies with the type of data selected for printing. After the sort order is input, you will be asked to input any parameters that define that order (if any). For instance, if you select to print out log information, then request the log be printed out for a single call sign, a window will pop-up and ask you for the call sign you want to print. Once the parameter is input (if required) and you selected to print log information, you will be asked if you want to print partial records in compressed mode (remarks field suppressed), partial records in normal text where the re- marks and address fields are suppressed and QTH and Name limited to 10 characters each, or full records in compressed format (these take 3 lines per record). ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 33 HyperLog The reason for the last prompt is due to the size of each record in HyperLog. Records are 256 characters in length. Even in compressed mode with an 80 column printer, you would not be able to print all the fields on one line. Consequently, two options were developed to "cram it all on one line" if you can get by with leaving a field or two out and/or print partial data for the name and QTH fields. If neither one of these two will do, then option 3 is the full record print in compressed mode. This will use three lines per record but will print all fields completely. The other options on the Utility/Print master menu are various utilities used to do things like compute Grid Squares for VHF/UHF contacts, rebuild the QSL data should a problem occur, and add new countries to the country file or edit the country information of an existing country in the file. A note of importance about the Add Country utility. This utility has been put in for the sole purpose of adding a new COUNTRY when the ARRL adds one the Official Countries List. It is NOT for adding additional prefixes to existing coun- tries. That feature is not currently available in HyperLog but will be included in a later release. Please remember this as you can really get in trouble if you start adding "New Countries" that are not really new countries. If you have a prefix that is not listed, use the ALT X method to assign a country to that contact. If you have worked countries that are now on the Deleted Countries List, and you worked them during a time that makes the contact eligible for a "New Country" according to ARRL standards, you can add these countries to the master file to ensure that the QSL Statistics will show your correct coun- tries total. If you have not worked any of these countries during the valid date range, then by all means, don't add them! They won't count for anything and will end up giving you erroneous statistics. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 34 HyperLog GETTING STARTED O. Labels HyperLog contains a complete label printing module that allows you to not only print a label for the contact, but also (optionally) print an address label. Radio Shack 3- wide labels (Cat. No. 26-263) were selected due to the large number of stores throughout the United States and the avail- ability of Radio Shack products world wide. These label are 2.5" wide and 15/16" high by 3 across. You can use single wide labels, if desired, just make sure they are 15/16" high so the spacing will be correct. Also, if using single wide, make sure you select that option in Setup. The label(s) can be accessed two different ways. When doing Contact Entry, if a "Y" is placed in the QSL Sent ("S") column, a prompt will appear just before the contact is written to disk asking if you want to print a label. By responding "Y" to this prompt, a series of prompts will guide you through the process of selections to print a label for the current contact. This allows "instant" QSL card generation at the time of the contact. If an "L" is placed in the QSL Sent ("S") column, a flag will be set for this contact. When the Label Print Utility program is run (its selection 4 on the Utility/Print Master Menu), all contacts that were logged with an "L" in the QSL sent field will be printed on labels. Again you will be prompted if you want to print an address label along with the contact label. If you select to print address labels, they will be printed for all contacts. A prompt appears during either of the above label printing methods which asks if you want to print the labels to disk. If you respond "Y", the labels will print to an ASCII file named LABELS.TXT. This file can be used to extract the contact and address information for special programming purposes (such as printing on QSL cards directly or whatev- er). ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 35 HyperLog GETTING STARTED P. CQ Zone Display ALT Z pops up a window that will show the CQ Zone statistics by band that you have accumulated to date. The zone infor- mation is retrieved from the country file when a contact is made and the statistics file is updated as that record is written to disk. Any changes made to the master file during Edit mode, if they affect the Zone information, automatical- ly update the Zone statistics. You can also print out zone information for any particular zone of interest by pressing the ALT U (utility/print menu) key combination and then selecting number one from that menu, Print Log Information. When the next window appears, select number 7, User Selected CQ Zone. The zones are horizontally across the top of the display. To conserve space, zones starting at 10 are written vertically rather than horizontally. The bands are to the left listed vertically. The intersect point of the band and zone is the status of that zone (W - worked C - confirmed) for that band. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 36 HyperLog GETTING STARTED Q. Import/Export On the Utility menu, selection # 9 will allow you to merge another HyperLog data file (HYPERLOG.DAT) that you may have created on another machine, possibly a portable computer, with the main data file. When you select ALT U #9, a prompt will appear asking for the PATH of the other HYPERLOG.DAT file. Just enter the path name, NOT THE FILE NAME. The program assumes a name of HYPERLOG.DAT. For instance, say you are using a portable computer and have logged some contacts on it during a contest or portable operation. To merge these with the Master datafile, you would put the data diskette from the portable machine in the disk drive of the master and select ALT U #9. When the prompt pops up asking for path name, you would say: A:\ (assuming your floppy drive was drive A). If you were to have the file in a sub- directory named PORTABLE on your C: drive, you might enter C:\PORTABLE\. Make sure you put the trailing backslash. It is MANDATORY. Once the program finds the file to merge, it will add all the records to the master file and update the indexes and QSL statistics automatically to reflect the new data. HyperLog also contains a data Import utility to read a Dbase III file and import the data to HyperLog. The Dbase file must be in the following order in order for HyperLog to accept it. Field# Names Type Length field 1 Date DATE 8 field 2 Time CHARACTER 4 field 3 Callsign CHARACTER 11 field 4 Sent CHARACTER 3 field 5 Received CHARACTER 3 field 6 Band CHARACTER 3 field 7 Frequency CHARACTER 6 field 8 Mode CHARACTER 3 field 9 Power CHARACTER 4 field 10 Name CHARACTER 20 field 11 Qth CHARACTER 30 field 12 Remarks CHARACTER 30 field 13 Address1 CHARACTER 30 field 14 Address2 CHARACTER 30 field 15 Qslsent CHARACTER 1 field 16 Qslreceive CHARACTER 1 If your Dbase III file does not have these fields or the field names you have are different, use Modify Structure ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 37 HyperLog to either add or change the names as necessary. Also, if you have additional fields, delete them. You should, of course, do all this with a COPY of your master Dbase III file, not the master itself. This way, you keep whatever master you have intact. As HyperLog reads the records in the Dbase III file, any callsigns that may refer to multiple states or countries will force a prompt to pop up asking you to manually choose the country/state that belongs with the contact. Also, the data is validated when read in. The Date, time, band, mode and RST information must comply with the guidelines used by HyperLog or the record will be bypassed. For instance, if a record uses a band other than one HyperLog accepts, it will be rejected. Check the documentation above concerning acceptable bands and modes. HyperLog merges the Dbase III records into the master file with any existing records. If you don't want to do this, you might copy all HyperLog files to another sub-directory and run the Dbase III import utility there creating a new HyperLog master file. Once you are sure the import was done correctly, you can merge this file with your "real" master by using the utility available by typing ALT U and then selecting option 9. You can also export an exact type image into a Dbase III+ file format. This will allow you to manipulate the data in some manner and then import this modified file back into HyperLog. The steps to do this are: 1. Export the file to Dbase III format paying attention to the prompts so you create the type of file that can be re-imported. 2. Make a copy of your HYPERLOG.DAT file. After making the copy, delete HYPERLOG.DAT and HYPERLOG.IX. 3. Import HYPERLOG.DBF (the Dbase III format containing your contacts) into Dbase III (or equivalent). When you finish making any changes you require, start HyperLog and go to the ALT U menu. Select item C to import the data. The contacts will be imported in any new order you may have created. After the file has been imported, press ESC to leave the ALT U menu and then press ALT I to re-index the new master file. That's all there is to it. This should provide you with more flexibility in working with the database. Should you ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 38 HyperLog have a problem with importing the file, remember you can go back the way you were simply by copying the backup you made (you DID do that didn't you?) to the HyperLog directory, starting the program and then pressing ALT I to re-index the master file. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 39 HyperLog GETTING STARTED R. Packet Radio Operation Version 2.0 introduces Packet Radio Operation from within HyperLog. This greatly enhances the DX advantage of the program. There are two Packet windows in HyperLog. One is a view only window and is opened by pressing the F8 key. This will open a window overlaying the Previous Contacts window. If your TNC is on and you have entered the correct information in SETUP, you should start seeing activity displayed after the window opens. If after a while you don't see any activity, exit HyperLog and check your SETUP parameters for Packet. To dispose of this window, you can press F8 again and the previous contact window will reappear. The second Packet window is a full screen window with data entry capability. This is the window where you will connect to the Packet System of your choice and send messages. This window is accessed by pressing and holding the Shift key and then pressing the F8 key at the same time. The last line on the window, where the cursor is located, is the data entry line. Simply type any TNC commands or Packet data you want to go to or out of the TNC, press return, and it will be transmitted. Press ESC to exit this Packet window. Understand that you don't have to be connected for HyperLog to monitor a DXPacketCluster and watch for DX Spots. Obviously, you will see a lot more traffic if you are not connected, but otherwise there is no difference in HyperLogs operation. It will still monitor and notify you when a Spot arrives that you need to check. In fact, you don't need to have a Packet window open at all! HyperLog is designed to watch for DX Spots completely in the background and only interrupt you when a Spot meets your criteria you entered in SETUP. Once a Spot is detected that matches your criteria, HyperLog will enter the spot in the Spot Window and sound a chime alerting you that a spot has arrived. You can then press the F7 key to open the Spot window to view the Spot. If you decide you would like to work the station listed in the Spot, simply highlight the Spot you want (if there is more than one) and press return. If you have a supported radio hooked up to the interface, it will be changed to the Spot frequency and Mode instantly so you can make the contact. When you are done, simply press and hold the Shift key and press F10 at the same time to return to the Frequency and Mode you were on before you jumped to the Spot! Talk about armchair DX! Just sit back and let the DXPacketCluster and HyperLog find it for you! All you have to do is "work em". ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 40 HyperLog GETTING STARTED S. Database Browser Starting with Version 2.0, Hyperlog has adatabase browser. This allows you to display your database in a full screen window and then scroll through the database to view or edit, or delete any contact you desire. A future release will support "Filters" that will allow you to set the criteria for records to display in the browser. To open the browser, simply leave the callsign blank and press return. The full screen browser will open and the first contact displayed will be the last one you entered. The default browser order is by contact date + time in descending order. You can change this by pressing ALT K while in the full screen browse window and selecting the appropriate "Key" from the window. The other two keys order the database by Callsign + date and by country. A future release will allow you to select any field for the key and have HyperLog build the temporary index for the display. While in the browser you may edit any contact by moving the highlight bar over it and pressing enter. An edit window will open and allow you to change any field you desire. You can delete a contact by moving the highlight bar to the desired contact and pressing ALT D. A window will pop up and ask if you are sure. Be sure you want to do this as it is a permanent delete! Of course the QSL stats are updated when any changes or deletions are made. To see the commands available while in the browser, you can press the F1 key for help. The browser is a "window" looking into your database. It shows you at a glance the contacts you've made. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 41 HyperLog GETTING STARTED S. Report Browser The Report Browser lets you view any report on screen and search for any key word or phrase in the report. If you answered N to the prompt to send output to the printer, HyperLog created a report file called REPORT.TXT. The browser knows to look for this file when invoked. You start the browser by selecting option "D" in the Utility menu. The browser will then read and display the latest report created on disk. If the report is large, it may take a few seconds for the browser to read in as much as it can and create the swap file necessary to scroll through the report. In the bottom left corner, the message "Reading ...." will be flashing while the Browser is reading from disk. When it stops flashing, you can scroll through the listing. To see a list of commands available while in the Report Browser, press the F1 key. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 42 HyperLog ADDITIONAL NOTES A few operational points should be detailed for better understanding. When logging a station with autopilot mode ON, the date and current time is recorded when the enter key is pressed after entering the call sign. This will be the date and time used for the contact. The reasoning behind this is it takes a certain period of time to actually type the information relating to the contact into the machine. Typically, that is done once a QSO starts. If the time is taken when the record was actually written to disk, the QSO start time would be off by the amount of time it took to record the data for the contact. This way, it takes into account the typing speed of the operator. A small Caveat here: If you enter a call sign and wait a period of time before actually starting the QSO with that station, the time logged will obviously be way off. A way around this is if you wait some period of time after enter- ing the call sign to actually start the QSO, simply back the cursor up to the Call Sign field and press the enter key again. This will reload the date and time into the QSO start time variable. A note on Monochrome or Black and White monitors. If you are using a B/W monitor or a laptop with a LCD screen, be sure that your mode is set to BW80 or MONO to get the cor- rect color mapping. If you don't do this, you may not be able to see the Highlighting necessary for certain program choices. If your radio is not on the SETUP list and it can be used with a computer, send me the "specs" and I will be glad to add it to the list. If for some reason you want to turn of the radio interface while running the program, press the F2 key and you will notice the character in the lower right hand corner of the screen disappear. When that character is displayed the interface is active. You can also turn off the Packet "Chimes" by pressing ALT-F2. These are the chimes that sound when a DX Spot you need has arrived. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 43 HyperLog HyperLog allows you to include a TNC setup file is you need to do anything to your TNC at startup for initialization. If you create a text file using any TEXT editor that produces a file you can read using the TYPE command and name that file TNCSETUP.INI, HyperLog will read it and send the commands to the TNC when it starts up. Once you create this file, add any TNC commands you need to to setup your TNC. ____________________________________________________________ HyperLog 44 HyperLog