I use the send to URL feature to compile a web public page ( VK5PJ handy 50 MHz spots Opening page ) showing activity on 50 MHz from Australia, one thing that has been missing from the quite comprehensive dataset is the Grid of the Station and the Spotter, which I would think would be available from pskreporter already? Not sure if this is a pskreporter limitation or one inside hamalert?
I would love to have the grids so I can calculate a distance for each spot i compile
Regards,
Peter, vk5pj
Hi Peter,
We hit the same issue on the European side, HamAlert’s send-to-URL doesn’t pass a grid locator field, even though PSKReporter itself has it. Occasionally a locator turns up buried in the raw comment text for some spots, but not reliably enough to count on.
What worked for us: we run a separate database that logs PSKReporter spots directly, keyed by callsign. When a HamAlert spot has no grid, we just look that callsign up there and take its most recent known locator. Only catch: it only fills in stations that actually report via PSKReporter, manual cluster spots stay empty. Once you have both grids, distance is just a standard Maidenhead-to-lat/lon plus haversine calculation.
https://cqcloud.de/eu6m_spots.html
Happy to share more detail if useful.
73,
Thomas, DL2TT
Hi Thomas,
Glad to know I am not the only one struggling with this, had considered creating a 2nd DB with calls and Grids in it for local lookup but unsure I want to go that far and then possiblly end up with stale data that I have to manage. I supose I could query QRZ for a grid. Hmm food for thought but it would have been nice to get it from one location.
regards, Peter, vk5pj