Thursday, January 27, 2011

Update Logger32 for VP8ORK

The current DX'pedition to South Orkney Islands is using the callsign VP8ORK. I checked to see if my Logger32 program would recognize that call as being an operation from South Orkney and it did not. Therefore, I needed to add that callsign to my country database so that when I enter QSO's with VP8ORK, Logger32 will log it as the correct country and I will not have to manually change the log entry on every QSO.

The first thing to do is to open Logger32 and pull down Tools | Database maintenance | Country/Prefix maintenance. That will pop up a window like you see on the left. Scroll down through the list of countries until you come to VP8/O, South Orkney Islands. Click one time on that listing and another window will open called "dbEdit : South Orkney Islands" just like you see in the picture on the right.

Now you will see an empty yellow box about the middle of that window. In that box you need to type a "less than" symbol, then VP8ORK, then a "greater than" symbol - just like you see in the photo on the right.

The "less than" and "greater than" symbols tell Logger32 that it is to look for the callsign that is between those two symbols and identify it as South Orkney. Now click on the "Add" button. You can now click on the close box of both these windows.

Back in Logger32 you can type in the callsign, VP8ORK, in the "Call" field of the Logbook Entry window and as soon as you finish typing it, Logger32 should now identify the call as being in the South Orkneys. Also, spots you receive will now show up as "VP8/O" instead of "VP8/F" which were previously being identified as the Falkland Islands. That's all there is to "mapping" a callsign to a particular country. Now, go work VP8ORK.