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Wednesday, September 3, 2008

DX Bulletin Reader 1.0 Software

WOW, here is ANOTHER neat program from Alex, VE3NEA. Alex has produced CW Skimmer, DX Atlas, MorseRunner, and loads of other ham software. DX Bulletin Reader is a tool for viewing, archiving and searching the DX news bulletins. It works on Windows 95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP. What this program does is that it "reads" the DX Bulletins and HIGHLIGHTS information on countries you designate as your NEEDED ones. Also, it highlights prefixes, callsigns, IOTA references and grid squares in different colors! Thus, you don't get bogged down in reading through the bulletins looking for particular information - it just jumps out at you!

Every highlighted item has a pop-up tooltip with more information like the IOTA Group Name and Prefix, the name of the country, latitude and longitude of grid squares, etc. AND, it has a text search that will search through all archived bulletins for that particular piece of information you remember reading but just can't find! Amazing!

You can see a screen shot of DX Bulletin Reader HERE and download it from the same page. Oh, and it's FREE!

Monday, September 1, 2008

A Month Without Sunspots

The sun has reached a milestone not seen for nearly 100 years: an entire month has passed without a single visible sunspot being noted.

The event is significant as many climatologists now believe solar magnetic activity – which determines the number of sunspots -- is an influencing factor for climate on earth.