Log4OM

I've been using Log4OM for 2.5 years now. I love it. I'm in the program daily and use just about every feature it has. I will first say that these ideas may be more suited to my taste, and the way it works now may be better for a general audience, but here's some things I would change:

1. I work cluster spots, and I manually search the bands. The cluster spots work great and everything that I need is contained on the F9 tab. When I am manually searching the bands, I often need information from the F7, F9 and F10 tab. The F10 tab might already contain the call sign that I'm hearing, and once I've confirmed the call and entered it, I need the F7 tab to see band stats. If the station is busy and I don't need his DXCC on that band, I may choose to move on and let others work him. Since the F10 cluster scanner tab is relatively small, it would be nice if it could be incorporated into the F9 tab, making F9 and F10 become one, or perhaps keep the F10 tab and provide a checkbox on the F9 tab toggle on and off the cluster scanner somewhere on the F9 tab. Suggestion #2 will be an expansion on something I touched on in this suggestion.

2. When I click spots in the F9 tab, the statistics tab on the far right (in the F9 cluster tab) only updates for cluster spots. If I press escape to clear the call, change frequencies, and manually type in a call in a different DXCC, the F9 statistics tab doesn't update to the new DXCC that I entered (it still contains info for the previously clicked spot) and I have to go to the F7 tab, which contains the statistics info that I need for the new call. It would be nice if the statistics "grid view" table were present and consistentent on all tabs, F7-F10, so I didn't have to bounce around so much and I could see all info at a glance.

3. Minimum and maximum usable frequency. When I am using the cluster, I would like the ability to filter based on minimum and maximum usable frequency. For example, if it's 1400 hours local time, I usually focus on 20m and above. If it's late evening, and I know that 15 and up are dead, then I want to limit spots to only 160-20m. I have tried two different approaches to achieve this, but I think it would be better if Log4OM could do it natively. I had been mostly achieving this concept by locking spots to only those originating from North America, but I found that this sometimes filtered spots from my cluster view that I could indeed work, so I stopped using the continent filter. The next thing I tried was manual cluster commands, but I find that to be tedious and not a perfect solution, i.e. "accept/spot 1 freq 14000/29000" for daytime and "accept/spot 1 freq 1800/14350" for late night. Is it possible to add, on the F9 cluster tab, band range drop-down selections? There's already a band selector for a specific band, but I would love to manually pick a range based on my observation of local band conditions.

4. When I am scanning the bands and hear someone calling CQ, and the DX prefix is unfamiliar to me, I sometimes have to jump between F1, F2 and F5. F1 for comments and notes, F2 to see the DXCC entity, and F5 for antenna bearing. I would love to see all the critical info on a single tab. Similar to suggestion #2, I think this would improve usability and efficiency in Log4OM.

Thoughts and comments?

Thanks for your time,
Brian - WB4IT

WB4IT wrote:I've been using Log4OM for 2.5 years now. I love it. I'm in the program daily and use just about every feature it has. I will first say that these ideas may be more suited to my taste, and the way it works now may be better for a general audience, but here's some things I would change:

1. I work cluster spots, and I manually search the bands. The cluster spots work great and everything that I need is contained on the F9 tab. When I am manually searching the bands, I often need information from the F7, F9 and F10 tab. The F10 tab might already contain the call sign that I'm hearing, and once I've confirmed the call and entered it, I need the F7 tab to see band stats. If the station is busy and I don't need his DXCC on that band, I may choose to move on and let others work him. Since the F10 cluster scanner tab is relatively small, it would be nice if it could be incorporated into the F9 tab, making F9 and F10 become one, or perhaps keep the F10 tab and provide a checkbox on the F9 tab toggle on and off the cluster scanner somewhere on the F9 tab. Suggestion #2 will be an expansion on something I touched on in this suggestion.

This make me thing about adding some features to the Cluster Scanner window that could make it more useful. Thanks for suggesting that. I'll start thinking about. Please remember we have some "size limits" and everything should fit in small pc's, mantaining and increasing useability on wider monitors.

2. When I click spots in the F9 tab, the statistics tab on the far right (in the F9 cluster tab) only updates for cluster spots. If I press escape to clear the call, change frequencies, and manually type in a call in a different DXCC, the F9 statistics tab doesn't update to the new DXCC that I entered (it still contains info for the previously clicked spot) and I have to go to the F7 tab, which contains the statistics info that I need for the new call. It would be nice if the statistics "grid view" table were present and consistentent on all tabs, F7-F10, so I didn't have to bounce around so much and I could see all info at a glance.

Statistic tab in cluster is bounded with cluster itself, It shows only informations for cluster items and it's not the same of the F7 one, that is bounded to the current selected callsign. They have 2 different functions.

3. Minimum and maximum usable frequency. When I am using the cluster, I would like the ability to filter based on minimum and maximum usable frequency. For example, if it's 1400 hours local time, I usually focus on 20m and above. If it's late evening, and I know that 15 and up are dead, then I want to limit spots to only 160-20m. I have tried two different approaches to achieve this, but I think it would be better if Log4OM could do it natively. I had been mostly achieving this concept by locking spots to only those originating from North America, but I found that this sometimes filtered spots from my cluster view that I could indeed work, so I stopped using the continent filter. The next thing I tried was manual cluster commands, but I find that to be tedious and not a perfect solution, i.e. "accept/spot 1 freq 14000/29000" for daytime and "accept/spot 1 freq 1800/14350" for late night. Is it possible to add, on the F9 cluster tab, band range drop-down selections? There's already a band selector for a specific band, but I would love to manually pick a range based on my observation of local band conditions.

MUF are calculated using external informations, and could help you finding the right frequency for a contact. Filtering cluster using MUF is not wise, because you can miss particular propagation situations and other events that could effectively allow you to make a contact. A possible workaround could be adding the "accept/spot..." strings in cluster screen preselected strings.
This will allow you setting those parameters with a single click?

4. When I am scanning the bands and hear someone calling CQ, and the DX prefix is unfamiliar to me, I sometimes have to jump between F1, F2 and F5. F1 for comments and notes, F2 to see the DXCC entity, and F5 for antenna bearing. I would love to see all the critical info on a single tab. Similar to suggestion #2, I think this would improve usability and efficiency in Log4OM.

Is this not useful for you?

Thoughts and comments?

Thanks for your time,
Brian - WB4IT

Hi Brian,

Have you tried "detached" windows? Many of the things which you want to see simulaneously can be seen if you detach windows and place them as desired. Of course, this depends on your monitor size, monitor resolution and number of monitors.

Here is a screen shot of my typical layout with the separate Cluster window launched from the Cluster tool bar, QSO Info (F7) detached and the worked/confirmed band grid (also on F7) detached. Then I have all information available including my log. Or I can switch to Cluster Scanner (F10) on the main window.

I also use Band Master from Afreet software, which runs with OmniRig, which gives you a vertical cluster scanner. Hopefully some day Log4OM will have its own version of that scanner, or integrate with Band Master.
All this fits on one 24" monitor at 1920 x 1080 resolution. I normally use 2 of these 24" monitors, and can go to 3 monitors for contesting.

I hope this helps.

Doug - W7DRM

MUF are calculated using external informations, and could help you finding the right frequency for a contact. Filtering cluster using MUF is not wise, because you can miss particular propagation situations and other events that could effectively allow you to make a contact. A possible workaround could be adding the "accept/spot..." strings in cluster screen preselected strings.
This will allow you setting those parameters with a single click?

MUF might not have been the best way to describe it. It's more for when I decide I'm only working low bands only, etc. and want to filter out other bands. I also saw there's a way to uncheck the bands in settings to achieve this, but that's persistent and not easily accessed.
On the country and bearing: all this time, and I never noticed that info over on the right. Thanks for pointing that out. That will work just fine.

How about adding an option to the cluster-filters like Show only own continent when bands above 6m are selected.
Especially when watching the cluster on VHF/UHF I do not care about W9 working W3 because the chance for a tropo opening from PA to W9 is as good as nil.

W7DRM wrote:Hi Brian,

Have you tried "detached" windows? Many of the things which you want to see simulaneously can be seen if you detach windows and place them as desired. Of course, this depends on your monitor size, monitor resolution and number of monitors.

Here is a screen shot of my typical layout with the separate Cluster window launched from the Cluster tool bar, QSO Info (F7) detached and the worked/confirmed band grid (also on F7) detached. Then I have all information available including my log. Or I can switch to Cluster Scanner (F10) on the main window.

I also use Band Master from Afreet software, which runs with OmniRig, which gives you a vertical cluster scanner. Hopefully some day Log4OM will have its own version of that scanner, or integrate with Band Master.

Log4OM_Screen.jpg

All this fits on one 24" monitor at 1920 x 1080 resolution. I normally use 2 of these 24" monitors, and can go to 3 monitors for contesting.

I hope this helps.

Doug - W7DRM

Doug - thanks for that info. Yet another feature that I somehow overlooked. I had to look in the manual to find it. I have a 27" monitor and I think this will work out nicely.

Daniele - hopefully some of my suggestions spark some ideas for new and improved features. Thanks to the Log4OM team for everything they do.

I spent some more time with the cluster login script and the cluster commands text file and came up with something that I'm fairly happy with. I'm sure Daniele will eventually add something to Log4OM that is better than this approach. If you're interested in more advanced cluster filtering, here's what I'm doing for now:

Edit the cluster logon script. Here's how mine looks:
I leave my "evening" filter as the default since I operate mostly in the evenings on 160-15m and that's where the workable stations for me are likely to be. When I last attempted to do this, I was missing something important. I was issuing show/dx/100 instead of show/mydx/100. sh/dx shows the last N spots and ignores your filter and sh/mydx shows the last N spots using your filter. I had to read the dxspider manual to figure out what I was doing wrong.

If I'm already connected to the cluster and need to adjust the filter, I use the send command function. To add commands to the dropdown selection, use notepad and edit %APPDATA%\LogOM\clustercommands.txt to suit your needs.
Commands in this file will be presets in the cluster command area in the F3 tab of the cluster in Log4OM. You could also set your cluster logon script to not send any filters or show commands and then manually select the appropriate spot filter then sh/mydx after you've connected.

What you end up with is a general filter at the cluster level, i.e. "I will only be working these bands". Then, filtering within those chosen bands via Log4OM for fine tuning, i.e. ignore worked, LoTW only, etc.

Hi Brain,

Nice work! I like that approach and have tried it out. One issue, I use VE7CC cluster which uses the CC commands, and those DXSpider commands do not work in the CC environment. So I figured out how to do the same thing with CC commands.

Basically you have to reject bands (not frequencies) and Pass bands to get them back. So I have created four new entries in my clustercommands.txt file as follows:

For day ops - SET/FILTER DXBM/REJECT 160,80,40,30
To reverse that - SET/FILTER DXBM/PASS 160,80,40,30
For night ops - SET/FILTER DXBM/REJECT 20,17,15,12,10,6
To reverse that - SET/FILTER DXBM/PASS 20,17,15,12,10,6

I also added two other utility commands as follows:

SH/FILTER DXBM (this queries the status of the band/modes being reported)
SET/FILTER DXBM/OFF (this returns the band/mode to default value, passing everything from 160m to 10m all modes.)

Of course, you need to follow the above commands with a SHOW/MYDX/100 to get things refreshed in the Cluster display. And, of course, these can be adjusted to suit your operating style and desires. Another detail - at least with VE7CC, these settings are persistent, in that they are remembered by the cluster and remain the same through logoff of cluster or Log4OM and restart.

Thus, for program startup, I am leaving my Cluster Login script as is, then I can change as desired with the drop down commands.

Here is a link to the CC command instructions - http://bcdxc.org/ve7cc/ccc/CCC_Commands.htm

Thanks Brian for the helpful tip!

Doug - W7DRM