[Introduction]
[Settings]
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[Maps]
[FAQ]
DX Monitor
Frequently Asked Questions
Please read this list of questions before submitting a bug report or comment.
My Spot window has no 'Announce' button.
Or the About... box doesn't look right and some of the characters on the
main grid are cut off at the bottom. These are all the result of using a 125% font
size. The temporary fix is to adjust your Control Panel | Display | Settings |
Font Size for Normal Size Font. Yes it's a bug.
I see the program access DX Summit, but no new spots show up.
- Check your filter settings (F7). You may be asking for spots which only occur rarely.
Frequencies are in KHz, not MHz.
- Check your sort order. If you accidentally click on the Time header, you
will sort the listing with the oldest spots at the top.
The new spots will be at the bottom of the list.
- Look for a funny date or time that might cause DX Monitor to think that all the
spots are older than the spots you have now. You can delete a line by pressing
Shift-Delete.
- If all else fails, exit the program, delete the DXSPOTS.TXT file, and start the program.
If you
suspect a problem with DX Monitor, use your web browser to compare with DX Summit output
before reporting it (use the web menu in DX Monitor).
When the server goes off for a few hours, I usually get a half dozen
emails reporting a bug in the program!
The UTC Time for "This Computer" is incorrect.
This value is obtained directly from the operating system and displayed with no changes made
by DX Monitor.
There are two choices available for getting the correct combination of local and UTC time:
- Fake it by choosing an adjacent time zone - this works in the
summer if you want to display UTC on your taskbar and have it calculated correctly for programs
which use it. Choose the
Azores Time Zone and set the time to UTC. In winter, switch back to GMT.
- Use the TZEDIT.EXE utility to create a real time zone that reflects
the time zone you are in. TZEDIT works with both W95 and W98. On the W98 CDrom it is
in the \tools\reskit\config folder. It is also available on the OEM SR2 CD which came with
later shipments of W95 computers, but was never available retail. Documentation is available at
Microsoft Article Q158195
.
You can download tzedit.exe from Express Technologies.
Some garbage data got into one of the spots. How can I get rid of it?
If you need to delete bad data, individual spots can
be deleted using Shift-DEL. Or you can delete the file DXSPOTS.TXT and
the program will create a new clean file from the next retrieval. You can also edit
individual entries by pressing ctl-e and editing right on the spreadsheet.
Will DX Monitor work from behind a firewall or with a proxy server?
Yes, DX Monitor supports proxy firewalls including those with username and password.
Will DX Monitor work with Windows NT?
Usually. It is difficult to tell when I accidentally add an incompatibility. I have to rely
on feedback from NT users whenever a new version appears. Version 0.89 works. If a later
version works (or breaks) for you, please let me know.
I sent a DX Spot but it didn't show up.
DX spots are sent via the form on the DX Summit web site.
Before the DX Summit site was created, they were actually sent via packet to a
DX Cluster and worked their way back to the internet. Sometimes one of the links was
down. The new DX Summit site has eliminated this step and spotting should be much
more reliable.
When will you do a version for Windows 3.11? Macintosh?
It is not likely to happen.
It is January and I can't see any new spots!
The new spots are probably going to the bottom of the list.
If you are using the current version of DX Monitor, the list will be sorted into the correct
order. If not, the program assumes that 12-31 is later than 01-01. No year is
provided with incoming spots. The "fixing" of December
dates is only performed until January 15. After that, if you still have December spots
in your list, they will be assumed to be later than the January ones. This is to save the
extra time required to fix the dates before and after each sort.
What tools were used to program DX Monitor?
DX Monitor was written using the Inprise/Borland Delphi 4 Development Environment.
The Winsock interface was written using the excellent freeware
Internet Component Suite
developed by François Piette.
Vote for new features you want to see!
What gets done next might depend on your feedback. Let me know what you would like to
see added...
- Connection to individual clusters via Telnet.
- Connection via TNC or Baycom modem to a DX Packet Cluster.
- More precise location information for countries with prefixes which designate
a geographical area.Done!
- Dial modem to connect to ISP and disconnect after retrieval.
- Frequency filtering for DX watch alarms.
- Prefix to country conversion on DX alarms.
- Spot output to the comm port for announcement to a local packet cluster.
- Speech output of announcements. PTT control for a dx repeater.
- Place DX Monitor in the Tool Tray. You can do this now with utilities like
TRAY.EXE.
- Rig control to automatically set the frequency on a FT1000/TS950/IC775/...
- Interface to CT, TRLog, LogPlus, DXBase ...
- Create alarm list from logging program "need" list.
- A DX Ticker to display recent spots in a tiny window.
- An INSTALL or SETUP program to install the software.
- Custom colors, fonts, and column order.
- Manual prefix/location and date entry to get beam heading, sunrise/sunset info.
- A chat window to allow real time chatting among all connected DX Monitor users.
- Auroral zone plots based on WWV information
- Grey line time length for a given location
- Recommended grey line sked times between two places
- MUF and LUF plots on the Azimuthal map
- Heuristic propagation projections based on DX and spotter locations in past few hours
- Stop wasting your time programming! Get on the air. I still need C3 on 160 RTTY and 10 FM.
The latest documentation is on the web.
Submit bug reports and comments.
[Introduction]
[Settings]
[Operation]
[Maps]
[FAQ]