Foundations of Amateur Radio

As you might know I'm in the process of building a cross-platform, open source, contest logger. Right now that project is at the stage where there is a proof of concept that you can use and install as a progressive web app on any web browser. It's intended as a starting point for discussion. Note that this is a long way from the stage where you might want to actually use it for any contest, it's not feature complete and if it breaks you get to keep both parts. It's currently cunningly named "contest-logger". No doubt that will change.

I'm collecting suggestions for features using the GitHub issue tracker, which you're welcome to contribute to. Behind the scenes, I'm writing the documentation that describes how I want to actually develop and design this application. What kinds of things are important, what will drive the process, all the planning stuff that sets up the project. Of course I'm doing this whilst writing articles, looking for work and dealing with the health-care fun and games associated with being alive.

While my project is nowhere near finished, truth be told, it really needs to start first, I've come across a different tool written by a fellow amateur Michael K6GTE.

This tool is written for Linux only in Python and is in Beta release at this point. This means that you can install and run the application and most of the functionality works.

The application is called Not1MM.

Here's what Michael has to say about his efforts:

Not1MM's interface is a blatant ripoff of N1MM. It's NOT N1MM and any problem you have with this software should in no way reflect on their software.

If you use Windows you should run away from this and use some other program.

I personally don't. While it may be possible to get N1MM working under Wine, I haven't checked, I'd rather not have to jump through the hoops.

Currently this exists for my own personal amusement. Something to do in my free time. While I'm not watching TV, Right vs Left political 'News' programs, mind numbing 'Reality' TV etc...

Michael goes on to say that:

The current state is "BETA". I've used it for a few contests, and was able to work contacts and submit a cabrillo at the end. I'm not a "Contester". So I'll add contests as/if I work them. I'm only one guy, so if you see a bug let me know. I don't do much of any Data or RTTY operating. This is why you don't see RTTY in the list of working contests. The Lord helps those who burn people at the... I mean who help themselves. Feel free to fill in that hole with a pull request.

You can find Not1MM on Michael's GitHub repository ready for your testing and experimentation. It's also available as a PyPi package if you're already familiar with Python.

In my opinion, one thing that this tool does well is consider how contest logging can be customised for individual contests and likely it will serve as inspiration for how I intend to implement the plugins in my own project.

I've also submitted a patch to Not1MM so you can use Docker to install it on your own machine or at least see what the requirements are to make it run in your environment.

I'm thrilled to have discovered this tool and hope that it solves some of your contest logging issues on your Linux workstation.

What features are you hanging out for in your contest logging adventures? Feel free to share your bug reports and feature requests to either Michael's project, or mine, or both.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB