DX Monitor
Setup
- Unzip the all the files in dxmon0x.zip to a new directory
(c:\DXMON for example).
- Create a shortcut to the DXMON.EXE program from your desktop.
- Run DXMON.EXE using the shortcut or Start|Run, etc.
If this is a new installation of DX Monitor, you will have to fill
in a few setup items.
- Owner Callsign: your callsign.
- Email Address: your email address.
- Latitude: North is +, south is -. (Press the ? button for an estimate.)
- Longitude: West is +, east is -.
- For UTC add: adjustment to your computer clock for UTC. (automatically filled in from system info)
Other options are available on separate pages of the setup:
- URLs: The URLs used to access the OH2BUA pages may be changed if Jukka moves them,
or if local mirror pages become available to reduce traffic at his site.
If you are stuck behind a firewall, the address and port number of your
firewall or
proxy server are also entered here.
- Retrieve every: the time between automatic retrievals.
Times less than 3 minutes are not allowed in order to not tax the
system bandwidth. The actual access time will be randomized within
the minute to reduce synchronized polling of the web site.
- Highlight latest: the time of spots posted within this
time period will appear in red in order to distinguish them from
older spots if you sort the display into a different order.
This value is also used to plot recent spots on the maps.
- Retain last: the number of spots to retain as new spots come in.
If the number is too high, sorting and updating will become slow.
This will depend on your computer.
- Save deleted spots: Check or uncheck the box to save the spots
which are deleted when new spots come in.
This file will grow very quickly.
The file is in text format with tabs between columns.
- Highlight spots within: a distance range around your QTH for highlighting
spots by "local" stations. Set to 0 if you don't care, or if you live in the US
where the distance cannot be determined from the callsign, unless you have the
Callbook feature activated.
This value is used for plotting local spots on the maps.
- Callbook Options: Enter the drive (d: for example). Enable the double
click lookup by checking the box. If the locating US calls box is checked, all
US locations will be based on the Callbook data. This will affect the data displayed
in the lower left panel when you click on a callsign - US state, beam heading, distance, sunrise, and sunset. If the
distance highlights box is checked, spots originating within the selected
range of your QTH will be highlighted. This may slow down your display update. The
CD Available box will be checked by the program when the CD is inserted in the drive
and verified for compatibility. Only the RAC Callbook CDRom is compatible.
- Time Options: DX Monitor will obtain the current UTC time
based on the US Naval Observatory
official clock from one of the
Public Time Servers.
Select a server that is close to you using the pop-down list, or type in a new server.
You may manually retrieve the current time by pressing the Retrieve Actual Time button.
Set your computer clock to the current time by pressing the Adjust Computer Clock
button. For this to work properly, your system Time Zone must be set correctly.
If a server address appears in the Server: field,
DX Monitor will retrieve the time about once an hour and compare the system
clock time to the actual UTC time.
The DX Monitor clock on the
main page will be corrected if necessary. If you have checked the Warn box,
you will be alerted if your system clock is out of the range you have specified. You can
then press the Adjust button to correct your clock if you so wish.
If you have checked the Automatically adjust clock feature, your system clock will
be updated if the correction is less than 1 minute, and the received time is accurate.
Clock adjustments are logged in the file TIME.LOG which can be viewed by clicking
on View Log. After a few weeks, you will have
a pretty good idea of the drift of your cpu clock. Windows 95 has the capability to adjust
for errors in the hardware clock by making 100 nanosecond adjustments every clock tick, but
I have not seen software to do this. Perhaps I should write some.
Placing the cursor over the Actual UTC time will show the time at which the last check was made.
Placing the cursor over the Computer UTC time will show the current estimated error of your cpu clock.
The error in the actual time, shown as +/- x seconds, is due to propagation delays on the internet. Try different
time servers until you find one that gives an error of 0.5 seconds or less. Please let
me know when servers go "off the air" so I can remove them from the pop down list.
Some servers are only accessible from certain domains.
The list is in the file, TIME.TXT, and you may edit it with any editor.
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. Press Ann to view
the last 25 announcements. Press WWV to view the last 25 WWV numbers.
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.
Click on WWV and then press New for a current update.
If you are in Auto mode, the WWV information is updated once an hour.
To announce a spot, click on the Spot button. Fill in the form, and press
announce. If no DX call and frequency is entered, the comment will be sent as
an Announce.
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, beam heading, distance, and sunrise and sunset times will
be displayed in the bottom panel. If you have a map visible, the location of the DX
will be spotted on the map. 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, and the Callbook CD is active, the Callbook data will
be displayed in a popup window. If the CD has been removed and reinserted,
or is inserted after DX Monitor is started, press F10 (setup) to enable Callbook operation. You can press F11 at any time to bring up the Callbook window and enter
calls manually. Even if there is no CDRom present, the beam heading and sunrise/sunset times
will be displayed and you can plot the station location on the maps.
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.
DX Alerts
Press F5, or select Set DX alarms from the Tools menu
to specify the prefixes or stations you are looking for. When they are spotted, a message
box will appear showing the frequency. This is also true if the DX 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. It is best to use it 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
version 0.7 of 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.
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 Search menu. You can search for
any text in the list of spots. Press F3 to continue searching for a second
spot.
Delete Row (Shift-Del) can also be used to delete a line if garbage data finds its way into the
display.
Editing
Press ctl-E or select Enable Edit from the Options menu to enable editing
of the display. This can be used to correct a callsign if you are saving them for
later analysis. It can also be used to enter a prefix if you wish to access the beam
heading, distance or sunrise/sunset information manually.
Press ctl-E again to turn editing off.
Map Generation
Press F8 or select Azimuthal Projection from the Maps menu
to display a Great Circle Map centered on your location. The location and
plot parameters based on "recent spots" and "local spots" are based
on the setup information. Press F10 to change these settings.
The stations plotted will also be filtered by frequency according to the last
plot you performed manually, as shown in the Plot | Spots... menu. The color of
the map tack can also be set in that dialog.
The first time you display an Azimuthal Projection map, either via the menu or by
pressing the Automatic Map hot button, a new map will be generated. This will take
a few moments. The new map will be saved as a BMP file in your DX Monitor directory.
The map is generated from the Mercator file, WORLD.BMP. You can
modify the colors or change boundaries on that map using any graphics software.
My thanks to Gledrius, LY2CG, for breaking up the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia on
the latest map.
File Menu
Generate New Map
Maps may be generated using the colors of the Mercator projection map WORLD.BMP.
Or you can generate a map with the single land color of your choice, as shown above.
Show Octant Lines?
Octant lines indicating the 8 principal beam headings may be added to the map.
Generated maps may be saved or loaded using the Open... and Save As... menu
items.
Save as Desktop Wallpaper will save the current map to your desktop. See the
Options menu for automatic options.
Plot Menu
Clear (ctl-C) will restore the original clean map as generated.
Terminator (ctl-T) will add the current terminator (Gray Line), showing the location
of sunrise and sunset around the world. Previously plotted data will be erased by this
step. Pressing the arrow keys will show the terminator for one hour
later or earlier. This is handy for checking for good propagation times to certain areas.
Plot Log File allows you to plot lists of callsigns from any text based
log file with fixed columns. The first few lines of the file will be displayed
under a column indicator so that you can indicate the correct column to use. The
color of the map tack may be selected.
Plots of files may be saved to disk.
Plot Spots allows you to plot DX spots from the main window. You can select
recent spots based on the F10 setup information, or select a number of spots to plot.
Spots may be filtered on the basis of frequency.
Plotted spots may be restricted to those spotted locally.
The color of the spots may be selected.
These settings will affect the automatic plotting of incoming spots.
Options Menu
Selecting Refresh Automatically will update the Terminator every 5 minutes
and plot new spots as they arrive. Spots are filtered according to the Plot | Spots
selections. This item is automatically checked when the Map button on the toolbar
is selected.
Selecting Automatic Wallpaper causes each update of the map to be saved to the
desktop as background wallpaper. When you exit DX Monitor, your original Wallpaper will
return. You can change the wallpaper settings for your system with the Control Panel Display
options. You should choose center, not tiled, not stretched to full screen.
If you want to save DX Monitors output as permanent wallpaper, select DX Monitor Wallpaper
from the list.

CT contest log
Press F9 or select Mercator Projection from the Maps menu
to display a Mercator Projection Map. The File and Plot menus
are generally the same as those described above for the Azimuthal Projection map.
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. When DX Monitor
is accessing the net, this button will change to STOP. Pressing it then will cancel
the current operation and stop future automatic retrievals.
Every 5 minutes (or the time period you have entered), DX Monitor will access the latest
DX announcements. If all 25 new spots retrieved 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. It is possible
for DX Monitor to automatically start in Auto Mode by using the command line argument
Auto when running DX Monitor. Right-click on the DX Monitor shortcut you have
created on your desktop. Select Properties. Select Shortcut. Add AUTO to
the Target entry. (e.g. c:\dxmon\dxmon.exe AUTO). If you
are using
DUNCE
to run DX Monitor automatically after a dialup connection, place quotes around the filename:
"c:\dxmon\dxmon.exe" AUTO.
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 and Announcements once
each hour. At this time, there is no facility for making announcements via the internet.
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 map speed 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 as new spots come in. The terminator
will be adjusted every 5 minutes. 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
It is possible to import pages saved using Netscape or Internet Explorer. Select
Import... from the File menu. You can only import the OH2BUA
page with this command. Other pages may crash the program.
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.ve7tcp.ampr.org/ftp/software/ct/cty.dat. Some time soon, I will add
a feature to DX Monitor that will allow it to automatically check the date of the
latest CTY.DAT file and retrieve it if it has been updated.
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) it would be nice
to have a subfile that could be used for more accurate beam headings, sunrise times, and map plotting. Any volunteers want to help create this file?
Time Corrections
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.
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The latest documentation is on the web.