[Introduction]
[Settings]
[Operation]
[Maps]
[FAQ]
DX Monitor
Operation
Connect to the internet if you are not already connected. You must be connected when
you first request information by pressing one of the buttons. After the first connection
has been established, you may connect and disconnect from the network at will. It is not
necessary to quit DX Monitor.
I hope the buttons are self explanatory. Press 25, 250, or 1000
to manually retrieve recent DX activity.
Recent WWV numbers are displayed on the toolbar. The arrows indicate the trend.
Move the cursor over the numbers to see the date and time they were posted.
Press the WWV button for a listing of the latest. 25 WWV entries.
If you are in Auto mode, the WWV information is updated once an hour.
Press the ANN button to view the latest 25 announcements. If you wish to make
an announcement of your own, fill in the bottom line of the Announcements form and press
the Send button, or the Enter key.
To announce a rare DX station, click on the Spot button. Fill in the form, and press
Send.
Please do not "test" spotting without entering a real DX station that
you can hear. Please use your own call to make announcements.
If you click on a callsign, the country, short path beam heading, distance, and sunrise and sunset times will
be displayed in the bottom left panel. If the map is visible, the location of the DX
will be spotted on the map in red and the callsign displayed.
If the Callbook is installed, the US state will be displayed and
the beam heading will be more accurate for US stations.
If you double click on a call the Callbook data will
be displayed in a popup window (if you have enabled this option in the settings).
If the QRZ online database has been enabled, your web browser will find the station
in the QRZ database.
If the CD has been removed and reinserted, or was inserted after DX Monitor had started,
press F10 to force DX Monitor to detect the Callbook CDrom.
You can also press F11 at any time to bring up the Callbook window and enter
calls manually.
If there is no CDrom present, the beam heading and sunrise/sunset times
will be displayed based on the prefix and you can plot the station location on the maps
or access the QRZ database online.
Schedule Alerts
At the right of the toolbar, the current date and time are displayed. Click on this clock to
bring up the sked window. Enter the date and time of any new skeds, along with a comment,
such as the call and frequency. DX Monitor will sound an alarm and display the sked
when the time comes. The particular wav file that is played can be changed at any time.
You will find lots of them in c:\windows\media, especially if you have 95 Plus. Other
good ones are in the MS Office sound directory or you can record your own.
Pressing F5 will also show the Sked Window.
DX Alerts
Press F5, or select Set DX alerts from the Tools menu
to specify the prefixes or stations you want to work. When they are spotted, a message
box will appear showing the frequency. This is also true if the DX station makes a spot announcement.
Calls from this list will show up in red on the announcement list so you will be sure to
see them. If you wish a custom WAV file for each prefix, place the filename after the
prefix. DX Monitor is still in beta testing. There have been numerous requests for
band or mode specific alarms. These features will be added soon. Therefore, I don't
recommend you spend much time creating alarms now. The format will change and you
will have to enter them all again. [Warning: this paragraph has not changed in 3 years.]
It is best to use this feature for stations you know are on the air that you are watching for.
Filters
As a result of an overwhelming number of requests, frequency filtering has been added to
DX Monitor. Press F7 or select Filters from the Options
menu. Enter the ranges you wish to observe. Check the box to Enable Filters. Stations
spotted outside these ranges will be totally ignored by the program. Be to sure to enter
the frequency in KHz.
Sorting
The display may be sorted by any column. The easy way is to click on the title
at the head of the column. Each click will reverse the order of the sort. You can
also select the sort you wish from the Sort menu. When new
spots are loaded, the sort order reverts to descending order by time.
Searching
Press ctl-F or select from the Edit menu. You can search for
any text in the list of spots. Press F3 to continue searching for a second
spot.
Editing
Press ctl-E or select Enable Edit from the Edit menu to enable editing
of the display. This can be used to correct a callsign.
Press ctl-E again to turn editing off.
Delete Row (Shift-Del) can also be used to delete a line if garbage data finds its way into the
display.
Web Menu
For your convenience, a few URLs to the DX Summit site have been hard coded into the
DX Monitor program. These are listed under the Web menu. Selecting any item on this
list will tell your default browser to load the selected page. If you suspect that DX Monitor
is not working, it is a good idea to check DX Summit directly to see if the server is
temporarily down.
Help Menu
The manual for DX Monitor is provided in html format. Links to the manual pages are provided
on the Help menu. These pages are displayed on your default browser.
Check for Updates...
Selecting Check for Updates... from the Help menu will cause the program to display
the Version window. This window shows you which version of DX Monitor you are currently running
and what version is the latest official release. The program checks for a new release once a day.
If you are not running the latest version, you will be alerted and this window will appear. You can
manually check for the latest version of the program and the CTY.DAT file by pressing the
Check Now button. Pressing the Download button will take you to the DX Monitor
web page, from which you can download the latest version. Pressing the Download CTY.DAT
button will download the latest CTY.DAT file.
The date of the CTY.DAT file on your computer should be later than the "latest" available CTY.DAT
file. This is because the local file date reflects the date it was downloaded.
Bug Reports and Feedback... will open your email program so that you can send email
to
peterj@benlo.com.
Join Support Mailing List will send your web browser to the
DX Monitor Home Page
where there is a form to fill out to join the mailing list. You can also join
by sending a blank email message to:
dxmonsubscribe@listbot.com
DX Summit Web Page will send your web browser to the DX Summit home page. This is where
the information that makes DX Monitor work comes from.
NCDXF/IARU Beacons will send your web browser to the NCDXF/IARU Beacons home page.
DX Monitor Home Page will send your web browser to the DX Monitor home page.
About DX Monitor... will display the DX Monitor copyright information and some
information about your system.
Automatic Operation
Press the AUTO button to begin automatic operation.
The button will change from green to red.
When it is red, pressing it will stop automatic operation.
Every 5 minutes (or the time period you have entered), DX Monitor will access the latest
DX announcements. If all of the retrieved spots are new, the program will retrieve the
most recent 250. If these are new and you have a "retain" setting greater than 250,
the program will retrieve the most recent 1000 spots.
When you first start DX Monitor, all you need do is press the Auto button to
fully update the DX list. Remember to connect to the net first.
If you were running in AUTO mode when you quit DX Monitor, it will start up
in AUTO mode the next time the program is run.
After DX Monitor loads, you have 5 seconds to press ESC if you wish to abort automatic
operation.
In automatic mode DX Monitor will update the WWV numbers, Announcements, and UTC clock once
each hour.
When you are in automatic mode, you can disconnect from the net at any time. When
a retrieval fails, the status bar will indicate [Network unavailable].
Every couple of minutes
DX Monitor will continue to retry. When you dial in again, the program will update the
display as needed and announce any DX station that you have listed in your alarm
list. Even when DX Monitor is minimized, it will continue to operate and watch for
your needed stations. You can read your email or surf the web while DX Monitor
does the "work" for you.
Automatic Map Plotting
The
button
on the toolbar (between the Auto and Stop buttons) will
display the Azimuthal Projection map with the Terminator line and the current
DX spots. This map will automatically update the spots meeting the criteria selected in
the Plot menu as new spots come in if the Automatic Refresh option is selected.
If the Automatic Wallpaper option is
checked in the Options Menu of the map, the map will be displayed on the
desktop as it is updated. The program may be minimized and operates in the background.
Importing Files
It is possible to import pages saved using Netscape or Internet Explorer. Select
Import... from the File menu. You can only import the DX Summit
pages with this command. Other pages may crash the program.
Spots with corrected times ©
The spot time is sent by the DX cluster from which the spot originated. Some
clusters have their clocks set incorrectly. If a spot is received for a time
which is in the future, the time is "corrected" to the current time and the
© symbol is displayed beside it.
Files Associated with DX Monitor
CTY.DAT
In order to determine the location of DX spots, DX Monitor uses the CTY.DAT file created by
K1EA Software
for the excellent CT contest logging
program. This file is updated regularly by Jim Reisert, AD1C, to include new countries
and special prefixes. The latest version can be obtained from
http://www.contesting.com/ct/files/cty.dat.
Once a day, DX Monitor checks the date of the latest CTY.DAT file and compares
it with the one you are using. If your file appears to be older than the latest
version, the program will download the new one and replace the old one. The old
file will be saved as CTY.OLD, and you will be alerted to the change.
CTY.DAT does not show locations more accurately than by country.
In the case of larger countries that have geographically accurate prefixes (VE, VK, PY, UA)
there is a subfile, REGIONS.DAT, which is used to locate stations from those countries.
Special prefixes are translated to the "normalized" prefix for the country, which is used
to look up the location.
An entry can be created with any particular callsign to customize the location for the map and beam heading.
I would appreciate help from users who add to this data file. Please
send me your additions or changes.
The file is in fixed column format.
RACCD32A.DLL
This DLL is used to access the Callbook CDrom. Even if you don't have the CD, it must
be available for DX Monitor at startup. It can be placed in the same folder with the
dxmon.exe executable, or it can be moved to your WINDOWS or WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory.
If you have already installed this file for another program, it is best to use only one
of them at a time.
BEACONS.TXT
This tab delimited file is used to describe the timing and frequencies of active beacons.
If the beacons change, the file can be modified. It is in tab-delimited format suitable for
editing with any spreadsheet program or a text editor which does not modify the format.
TIME.TXT
This plain text file contains a list of time servers which can be used to retrieve the
current correct time.
WORLD.BMP
This is a Windows bitmap file containing the Mercator projection world map. The Azimuthal
projection map is created from this map. If you wish to change the colors or improve the
map, just make sure the locations don't move. Please share any improvements with all of us
by sending me a copy.
dxmon.htm
The HTML files contain the program documentation in the form of browsable local web pages.
The *.gif and *.jpg files are used to present graphics in these web pages.
Files created by DX Monitor
DXSPOTS.TXT contains the data displayed in the grid.
ANNOUNCE.TXT contains the latest announcements.
WWV.TXT contains the latest WWV numbers.
DXMON.INI contains the settings for DX Monitor.
TIME.LOG contains the log of adjustments made to the system clock in RTF format.
DXALARMS.TXT contains the DX alerts you have created.
SKEDS.TXT contains the time alarms that you have created.
OLDSPOTS.TXT contains the old DX spots which have scrolled off the bottom of the grid.
37122.BMP contains the azimuthal map for 37 degrees north, 122 degrees west. Yours will
have a similar name with your latitude and longitude.
VERSION.TXT contains the last version information downloaded daily.
\TMP is a directory which is created while the program is running. It is deleted when the program
exits normally. If the program crashes, the files in this directory may contain clues to the problem.
[Introduction]
[Settings]
[Operation]
[Maps]
[FAQ]