Tried it, looked at it, took it out. A headline names no band, so the
only honest verdict is entity-level — and a pane where every row reads
NEW DXCC or worked says nothing an operator can act on. Two words
repeated forty times is noise wearing the clothes of information.
The announcements pane keeps its badge, where the announced bands and
modes make the verdict specific enough to be worth a colour. The news
pane keeps what it is good at: what is happening, and a Watch button.
Changelog entry withdrawn with it — it never shipped.
ctrl+wheel is the WINDOW zoom everywhere else in OpsLog, and one gesture
that resizes the whole app over one panel and one band map over another
is a gesture nobody can trust. The + and - buttons keep the zoom, and
the footer hint stops advertising what is gone.
The DX-World headlines now carry a chase badge like the announcements —
but ENTITY-LEVEL only. A headline names no band, and asking the slot
question without one answers 'new band' for every entity ever worked:
the one mistake that costs a QSO. So the news says NEW DXCC or worked,
and the sharper verdicts stay where the bands and modes are known.
A legend is a reference, not a running display: once its colours are
learnt it spends four lines of a short screen saying nothing new. A
chevron in the footer folds it, the same chevron brings it back, and the
choice survives a restart.
The channel list had grown in the order channels were added, so finding
one meant remembering when it arrived. Paper QSL and LoTW lead — they
are the two that carry an ARRL award — and the rest sort by name. One
ordering function feeds both the picker and the status table, so the two
cannot drift apart; the three extras-backed channels (OpsLog card,
HAMLOG.online, HamQTH) now sit in that same list instead of being
appended by hand after it.
The channel picker and the status table both list it now, sent only —
HamQTH publishes no confirmation feed, so its received column shows a
dash rather than an N that would read as 'not confirmed yet'. Backed by
the same APP_OPSLOG_HAMQTH_SENT extras the uploader stamps.
The news pane had clickable callsign chips while an announcement had a
Watch button — two gestures for one act. The chips become plain labels
(they still show which calls are already watched) and the news card gets
the announcement's own Watch button and Open link.
A DXpeditions tab holding the two feeds the DX world announces itself
on: NG3K's ADXO (structured — dates, entity, calls, bands, modes, QSL
route) and DX-World's headlines. What a logger can say that a news
reader cannot is whether the operation is worth chasing, so every
announcement is put through the SAME verdict the cluster paints on a
spot — one badge, strongest wins, dimmed when the need is only a missing
QSL — with an 'only what I need' filter. One click watches every
callsign of an operation; the news headlines are mined for callsigns so
they can be watched the same way.
Parsers ported from DXHunter's and pinned with table tests against real
feed text: the 'as PJ2/W2APF' mining, the DXCC-prefix-first
normalisation without which no spot ever matches, both ADXO date forms,
and the '160-6m' span whose unit is written once (DXHunter read that as
6m alone and lost the low end).
Watchlist membership now announces itself app-wide, on the same card as
a new version: the bindings emit watchlist:changed, so a call added from
the cluster or this tab is confirmed where the operator is actually
looking — the panel's own inline message never was.
HamQTH joins the Confirmations page with a sent side only — the site
publishes no confirmation feed, so there is nothing to receive — and it
defaults to R, the same 'still to upload' the other online services get.
That default could not have worked as written. HamQTH and HAMLOG.online
keep their sent state in an ADIF extra, and eligibility blocked on the
key being PRESENT — so an operator setting the natural R default would
have stamped every new QSO 'already gone' and silently disabled the very
auto-upload the default arms. Eligibility now reads the VALUE: the ADIF
pending statuses mean pending, anything else means sent. Guard-tested
both ways.
Chase POTA already withdrew its badge, filter chip and column when
unchecked; US counties and new prefixes now have the same switch, and
unchecking Chase new grids finally withdraws the NEW GRID badge too (the
backend stopped learning squares but the display kept shouting the ones
it knew — the setting is mirrored to localStorage so the display layer
can gate synchronously). All withdrawal happens at the display layer:
the facts keep being computed, so re-ticking a box needs no rescan.
qso_realtime.php with the account's callbook credentials (which the
external-services config falls back to when its own are blank), one ADIF
record per QSO, prg=OpsLog. HTTP status IS the answer: 200 saved, 400
rejected (a duplicate counts as delivered, like HRDLog's insert 0), 403
credentials. Sent-state lives in APP_OPSLOG_HAMQTH_SENT extras like
HAMLOG.online — ADIF names no HamQTH field. Auto-upload on log, on-close
batch, right-click Send to, QSL Manager backlog, and a Test button that
authenticates against the callbook login, which cannot touch the log.
Fixes a real mis-route on the way: manual 'Send to HAMLOG.online' had no
branch in runManualUpload and fell through to QRZ.com — the selection was
uploaded to the wrong service with the QRZ key. Both extras-stamped
services now have their own branch.
The Confirmations page's Club Log row gains its received side, applied to
every new QSO the way QRZ.com's already is — so the match download's Y
stands out against a ledger of explicit Ns.
The catalog's order is the grid's column order, which appends new columns
at the end — so the two ClubLog rows sat at opposite ends of the Uploads
box. Sorted for display only; the grid keeps its own order.
startAmps tore down and rebuilt every amplifier client on any settings
save, and closing a COM port makes the Windows driver drop DTR/RTS. On a
KPA500 those lines ARE the power switch — so 'save' meant 'amplifier off
twenty seconds later', exactly F1TPL's report, and the fix that held the
lines while OPEN couldn't survive a close. An amplifier whose config is
unchanged now keeps its running client across saves; the others still
rebuild.
Also: isolate on the FT Map panel — Leaflet's z-1000 panes were painting
over the menu bar and the Preferences dialog, as the grid map's own
comment warned.
Two new QSO columns, clublog_qso_download_status/date — a Club Log MATCH,
the service's own confirmation (both stations uploaded the QSO, paired
within 15 minutes). Full promoted-column lockstep: migration 0031, repo
insert/scan, ADIF dictionary + import + export (app-defined
CLUBLOG_QSO_DOWNLOAD_*), table columns, filter builder, bulk edit and the
QSO editor's Club Log row.
The QSL Manager's Club Log entry now actually downloads: getmatches.php
with the existing account settings and the embedded application key,
incremental via the match-completion date filter, matched call+band+mode
±15 min with a mode-blind fallback because Club Log reports 'false' for
modes it cannot infer. Matches always exist on both sides, so unmatched
ones are listed rather than skeleton-added.
And Super Check Partial can merge Club Log's weekly SCP list (~180k calls
worked on the air in the last 3 years) with MASTER.SCP — an opt-in
checkbox under the SCP setting.
The hard maxBounds added for the single-world look fought the zoom: with
the world smaller than the window the clamp dragged every zoom step into
a corner. The noWrap tiles already guarantee one world on their own, so
the bounds go — on both maps.
An FTx menu between View and Tools gathers FT Decodes, FT Map and the
Grid squares map — three views of the same UDP feed that were buried in
Tools. And the watchlist spot rows swap the elastic country column for
fixed widths, so band, mode and frequency read as columns instead of
starting wherever each country name happened to end.
The FT map wrapped the planet into a row of copies and showed Leaflet's
hard-coded grey beyond it. noWrap tiles inside hard bounds now, like the
grid-square map already did — and the container background override moves to
style.css so EVERY map's surround follows the theme's card surface instead
of #ddd (the grid map's per-div fix was losing to leaflet.css specificity).
A new FT Map tab (Tools menu, beside FT decodes): every station decoded in
the last half hour drawn as a great-circle arc from the operator's own
square, coloured by band the way PSK Reporter taught everyone to read it,
fading with age, one arc per call (its freshest sighting), a tooltip with
call/grid/SNR, the MainMap basemap picker and a legend of only the bands on
screen.
Performance was the open question and it is answered structurally: the panel
mounts only while its tab is ACTIVE (zero cost otherwise), the map renders
canvas (one element, not one node per arc), arcs are capped at 300, and
redraws follow the decode list — every period, not every frame.
Dimming the filled chip to a transparent background left its light
foreground text on nothing — an invisible badge in the row. Unconfirmed now
renders in the category's own hue, dashed border and text, like the extras
beside it.
The frontend caches statuses and only asks about unknown keys, so flipping
the chase mode left half the screen judged under the old rules until a
restart — which read as the mode not working. The backend now broadcasts an
invalidation and the panels re-ask as rows repaint. The entity badges also
say their name with a question mark, dashed, when the need is only a missing
QSL — the 50% opacity was invisible on a filled chip.
The unconf label was hard-coded to GRID? for every category — a prefix
worked-but-unconfirmed showed as a second grid badge beside the real one,
which read as impossible. Each badge now says its own name plus a question
mark. And the global Chase block moves above the Chase POTA/SOTA/grid
checkboxes, where its operator expected the master switch.
The gap between worked and confirmed becomes visible everywhere. A Chase
setting on the DX Cluster page picks the mode; in new-plus-unconfirmed the
verdicts for DXCC/band/mode/slot, prefix, county and state are judged against
CONFIRMED-only ledgers built from the operator's chosen sources (LoTW, card,
eQSL, QRZ.com — HRDLog has no confirmation field in ADIF to offer), and a
need that exists only because a QSL never arrived is flagged Unconf: the
cluster and decode badges render it dimmed, the convention the grid hunt
introduced. The grid's own Chase selector folds into the global one; its
square-matching scope stays where it was, being grid-specific. One snapshot
key change rebuilds the cache when any of it flips.
The WAS gap made visible: a worked-states set joins the cluster status cache
(distinct states over the three US entities), the status entries carry a
NewState flag wherever the state resolves (log county first, ULS licence
second), and the decode panel gains the badge in its status column plus the
filter chip alongside NEW/BAND/MODE/GRID. Colour from the shared marker
palette, so the cluster can adopt it later without a second hue.
Between the locator and the country, per its operator: the two-letter badge
anchors the eye and the spelled-out name answers it — 'SD' alone is a quiz
for a European. The status-cell badge from the first pass moves here.
Plain text, not a badge — it is a fact, not an action — placed first so a
WAS chaser can scan the column edge. Shown whenever the status cache knows
the state (log county data or the licence address).
The voice keyer grows to F1-F12 — the UI was already data-driven, so the
count constant, the F-key range and the labels are the whole change.
And the preferences stop stuttering on a busy station: every spot batch,
decode batch and CAT snapshot re-rendered the entire App tree behind the
dialog — cluster grid, decodes panel, thousands of nodes — and the pointer
janked over the very panel the operator was trying to use. While Settings is
open the flushes park their batches in the pending refs (bounded) and CAT
repaints at most every two seconds; closing the dialog drains everything.
The panel now mirrors the decoder's own window line for line — the operator
compares the two side by side, and the SNR sort scrambled that
correspondence. The report is still right there in its column.
Three faults, one report. The slow poll asks ^TP — the KPA1500's ATU, which
a KPA500 (no ATU) never answers — and ask() dropped the whole connection on
any read timeout: a two-second stall and a reconnect every slow cycle, which
is why buttons lagged and the status read wrong. Worse, every serial reopen
toggled DTR/RTS — and those lines are the KPA500's POWER SWITCH (that is how
the Elecraft utility turns it on), so the amplifier obediently switched off
twenty seconds after its operator pressed nothing but Standby.
Silence is no longer a dead link (write errors still are), ^TP is never asked
again after one silence, the control lines are asserted once and held, and
the baud field becomes a list of the rates these amplifiers actually speak.
Configure (message 15), mode field only, every other field sent as
no-change: an FT4 spot clicked while WSJT-X sits in FT8 lands the operator
ready to decode instead of staring at gibberish. Sent to every instance
heard this session — one already in the right mode treats it as a no-op —
and only for modes the decoder actually speaks (FT8/FT4/JT65/JT9/MSK144/
Q65/FST4); CW and SSB are none of its business. Toggle in the Connections
panel, on by default.
The great-circle arc to a polar entity (Franz Josef Land) peaks near 88°N;
fitting the raw arc points framed a band of tile-less white above 85°, where
Web Mercator ends. The camera's bounds are clamped to ±85° — the line still
draws to wherever it goes, only the framing stays where there is a map.
Message 13 paints callsigns in WSJT-X/JTDX's own Band Activity window with
verdicts from the same cluster status cache that colours the spot grid:
watchlist pink, new DXCC green, new band for its entity orange. Deduplicated
per instance+call+verdict, one datagram each; a verdict that lapses (the
operator worked them) clears that call, and turning the option off clears
everything via the protocol's CLEARALL!. Off by default, switch in the
Connections panel.
Message 7 asks a program heard for the first time this session to replay the
decodes already on its screen, so the FT decodes panel starts full instead of
empty until the next period. Replayed lines arrive marked not-new and are
shown but never auto-answered — the auto-caller now checks, on top of its
30-second freshness gate.
The operator preferred the original's aesthetics. Adopted: the signature pink
callsign (a fixed identity colour, like the cluster palette), counters as
coloured pills, a quieter card surface with a hover, a stronger needed bar on
spot rows, and the lightning bolt back on the DXpedition badge. Everything
else stays on theme tokens.
The operator measured the whole table: 10 W showed 83, 12 W showed 100, 13 W
showed 8 — the bargraph is relative to a meter RANGE that flips at 12 W
(0-12 QRP, 0-120 above). A bar percentage was never watts; with the PC
setting choosing the range, it converts, and the console prints the watts
beside the bar.
The console's thin home-made bars were the one holdout — every other panel
(Flex, Elecraft, the amps, the tuner) draws the same MeterBar. And the mode
badge said SSB, which on any band leaves the operator guessing which
sideband the rig is on: the panel now shows USB or LSB (the log keeps ADIF's
SSB).
The blind kill at connect still left a real 7760 streaming — the selector
byte differs by model, and the result was discarded so a quiet failure looked
like a cure. Both forms go out now (a NAK costs one frame) and the outcomes
are logged. The power table also gains its third measured anchor: a real
200 W reads full deflection, so raw 213 is 200 W — not the printed face's
250.
The CI-V meters are point samples: between two SSB syllables a poll lands on
0 W and a perfect SWR, so a 150 W transmission read 0-10 W most of the time
and the SWR sat at 1.0. Power now decays like a needle and SWR holds its peak
then snaps to the live value — the same meterPeak the Yaesu and Kenwood
consoles already use. The readout column also widens so '180 W' stays on one
line.
TUNE (1C 01 02) started a cycle; nothing sent the 0 that puts the tuner back
through. An ATU chip beside SPLIT now toggles it, and the tuner state is read
on the slow front-panel beat so the radio's own TUNER button stays in sync.
Added on a report that they were missing; they were below the fold, not
absent. The useful parts stay: the MOX button routes the PC microphone on a
network station, split aligns the TX VFO's mode, and SetIcomSplitOffset
remains available for a future use.
Every Icom streams its waveform differently: the IC-7851 controls a scope it
never streams, and a real IC-7760 stops answering CI-V altogether a few
frames in — taking CAT and the audio down with it, which is this week's whole
dropout saga. Chasing a per-model frame layout for a decoration is not worth
a console that drops the link; the radio's own scope is better anyway. The
backend scope plumbing stays (harmless while nothing enables it); the UI and
its enable path go.
Keying alone is right on USB, where the operator talks into the radio's own
mic; over the LAN it transmitted silence. The console button now goes through
one binding that picks the road: network To-radio → the same key-and-stream
path as the Talk button, USB → key and nothing more.
The MOX and SPLIT controls lived at the bottom of the Transmit card, below
the fold on most layouts — a console whose PTT needs scrolling is not a
console. A strip under the mode row now carries the PTT and Split as
OFF/+1k/+5k/+10k, DXpedition style, on a new SetIcomSplitOffset that takes
the chosen TX offset (0 keeps the old CW/SSB convention). The mode-alignment
from the previous fix rides along on every engage.
Its enable condition predated the network audio: with From-radio empty — the
normal network setup — the button was greyed out, and an operator who had
stopped listening had no way to start again from this panel. The stale 'later'
hints on both buttons said the network paths did not exist; they do.
The unselected VFO was read only when split was on, so a dual-receiver rig's
second dial sat blank on the console. It is now read on the same slow beat
regardless. And engaging split copies the main's mode (and data flag) onto
the TX VFO with 0x26 01 — a split whose TX VFO still speaks yesterday's mode
transmits FM into a CW pileup; rigs that predate 0x26 NAK it harmlessly.
Same remembered preference as the console's speaker button, surfaced where
the stream itself is enabled — tick RX audio and decide in the same breath
whether it reaches the speakers. Applied immediately, no save needed.
Muting the network RX audio took a trip through Settings → Audio → Stop
listening — two panels away from the console the operator is actually using.
A speaker button now sits beside ON/OFF (network only, like them): one click
to listen or mute, the recorder and the voice keyer unaffected, the choice
remembered across reconnects and launches.
rouggy