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Station Information Window

The Station Information Window centralizes all the information sources about a particular callsign. First, it will perform a lookup on various databases on CD or your hard drive. At present, the RAC Callbook CD and the free K4HAV FCC/VE Database are supported. Quick buttons will search for information on the QRZ and HamCall web sites or Google for other sources. Notes may be taken which will be displayed any time the callsign is entered.

Station Information Window

Press F11 to open the Station Information Window from other windows. If a callsign is selected, it will be automatically shown in the edit box. Station Information is also available on many of the right-click popup menus throughout the program.

If the window is opened with a callsign present, DX Monitor will search the Callbook and/or the K4HAV Database for a match and display the information in the Callbook window. If available, the name, address, Latitude and Longitude and US County will be shown.

The status bar at the bottom will show the beam heading, distance and sunrise and sunset times.

Callsign Box

Enter a callsign and press the Enter key to start a search. If notes have been saved, they will appear in the Notes Window.

Search Button

Press the search button to start a search and show notes. Coming soon: information saved in the form of text or web pages will also be searched and indexed. Remind me if you are waiting for this features.

HamCap Button

Press the HamCap Button to run the HamCap program to check the propagation from your location to the DX Station.

Map Button

Press the map button to locate this station on the map.

Google Button

Search Google for information about the station.

HamCall Button

Search the HamCall web site for information about this station.

QRZ Button

Search the QRZ web site for information about this station.

Callbook Display

This is an edit window. You can use the normal editing keys (ctl-c, ctl-x, ctl-v, ctl-z) to edit the address shown and cut and paste it to another program.

Notes

A free form area for typing or pasting notes about a station. Notes are saved in the folder Info in the DX Monitor folder. Each note is in the form of callsign.txt. VE3EJ's notes can be found in c:\Program Files\DX Monitor\Info\VE3EJ.txt.

When a callsign is entered, or the window is shown with a callsign present, any notes will be displayed. Changes are saved automatically. Normal text editing keys work (ctl-c, ctl-x, ctl-v, ctl-z, ctl-a).

File Menu

Open .... Open a Notes file for editing.

Save. Save the current notes file to the name used when opening it.

Save As .... Save the notes file to a different name.

Close. Close this window. Or press the esc key, or type Alt+F4.

Edit Menu.

Options Menu

Select Font. Select the font to be used for display in the Notes and Callbook Windows.

Select Background Color. Select the background color for the Notes window.

Build FCC Database. Before using the K4HAV FCC and VE Database, it is necessary to install it in DX Monitor. The data will occupy approximately 30 Megabytes of disk space after installation. More space is required during the installation process.

DX Monitor's interface to the database was not built for memory efficiency. I would not expect good performance (if it works at all) on computers with limited memory capacity.

Installation Steps Go to the K4HAV web site. Scroll most of the way down the page and download the two files necessary for installation: db_all.zip (labelled as one big zip file and, in the next section, Support.zip, labelled FCC Search Program Supporting Files. You may download the 14 smaller files that make up the big zip file if you are on a slow connection. You do not need any of the other index or support files for use with DX Monitor. Unzip the files to any temporary folder. Remember where they are. Select Build FCC Database from the Options menu. Locate FCC Support Files: ZIP0. A file open dialog will ask you to find the file ZIP0, which is one of the files in support.zip. Find it and press Open. Locate FCC Data Files: ADDR_A.TXT. If the database files are not in the same folder with the support files, you will be asked to locate them. These are the 14 files downloaded as db_all.zip or as 14 separate smaller downloads. If all goes well, the status bar will show each of the files being loaded and the database being sorted. This may take from 5 seconds on a fast computer to a long time on a slow one with limited memory. Beta testers, I would like some feedback on this. FCC Database Contains 793207 records. If you see a message like this, the installation was successful. The exact number of records will vary. K4HAV updates the database once a week from the FCC central database. The downloaded files are no longer necessary for DX Monitor. All the information needed has been copied to the FCC folder under DX Monitor.

Help Menu

Search. Search the documentation for words or phrases.

Help F1. Help for this Window.

[Contents] [Introduction] [Preferences ] [Operation] [Maps] [Telnet] [FAQ]