Award Tracker 3.3.3

 I last mentioned this back in 2011, and am still using it. It's a cool program to help with Awards hunting, and it's free. It was written by David W5DJT, and still being updated and maintained by him. It's super handy and easy to use for WAS, WAC, DXCC, County Hunting, 10-10, RAC, etc. If you have any issues, want something added, etc, you'll find David at his email listed on QRZ. His website is W5DJT.com . Here's a short video...

2 Computers, 1 Mouse/Keyboard!

I run two computers at my operating position in "studio A". Two keyboards and two mice really clutter up the table in front of the radio gear. I stumbled across a piece of free software that allows me to seamlessly slide my cursor from one screen to the other, and the keyboard input follows the mouse. You can copy things to the clipboard in one computer and paste it on the 2nd computer, and even drag single files from one box to the other (only one file at the time, with a 100meg file size limit)

The software was easy to install and ran without a hitch on my junk computers (one old XP Pro box, and an old Dell Optiplex 260 Win7 box). Now, one mouse and 1 mini-keyboard runs both computers at once, I love it! The software is called "Mouse Without Borders". The latest version is on Microsoft and doesn't support XP. I found an older version that does support XP over on cnet. Oh, it'll run up to 4 computers at the same time, too.

I ran multiple monitors on a single computer about 10 years or so ago with a graphics card and some software. In my situation, I'm running multiple 15+ year old boxes at home to share the load, so it looks to be a good answer to my problem. I could buy something new and much faster that would do everything, but I'm a tightwad and am always looking ways to keep old stuff working. It's neat to not to toggle between screens on my primary applications, and everything is fast by each computer running with less overhead. 

Here's a link to the new version for Win7 and newer: 
Mouse-Without-Borders-NEW

Here's a link to the older version that includes Win XP: 
Mouse-Without-Borders-OLD


Dave WB4IUY

http://www.WB4IUY.net

eQSL Saved My Log!

eQSL saved me tonight. My logbook crashed (my fault) and I was able to download a current copy of my log from eQSL for recovery. I upload to eQSL every time I make a log entry, so it was current, right up to my last contact. There's a button for this in AC Log, and the eQSL upload is almost instantaneous. The other online logs I use aren't quite as quick to upload to, or aren't offered as a quick upload feature in my log, so I only upload to LOTW, QRZ, CQFriends, Clublog, QRZCQ, and SK6AW every week or two.

When my logbook crashed I initially panicked because I had not made a backup of my log recently. After a few minutes of pondering the situation, I remembered that my eQSL upload should be up to date and contain all the info I needed. I downloaded the .adif file, imported it into my logbook, and all was recovered. Thank you eQSL!

Awards Tracker Updated!

David W5DJT has updated the Awards Tracker program again. It can now export files in adif format. There are two types of adif files. One that is compliant with the adif 2.2.x standards and one that works if imported into ACLog. You can download the latest version of this cool tool at:

http://www2.w5djt.com/downloads/AwardTracker-1.3.2.zip

Dave WB4IUY
www.WB4IUY.net

ARRL adds VUCC to LOTW!

The ARRL Logbook of the World has now added the ability to confirm, track, and obtain VUCC on all bands from 50mhz and up. This is a feature that has been a long time in coming, and should be a nice perk for those working VHF/UHF/SHF frequencies to help obtain the VUCC awards. Additionally, they included the coveted Fred Fish Award in the system as well.

Log into your LOTW account, select AWARDS, and click the 'Create New VUCC Award Account' button. You must set one rule for it to work, and it'll walk you through that. If you have been operating from the same location, or locations within the 200km requirement of the ARRL, simply choose "Call Sign" and it'll do the rest.

If you're not on LOTW, sign up at https://p1k.arrl.org/lotwuser/default . You can simply upload your files from your currentl logging program in ADIF format (most all logs export in that format), and you'll be in business. Another perk of doing this is it provides an online backup of your logs, in case you have a computer crash.

Enjoy!
Dave WB4IUY
www.WB4IUY.net