New Digital Modes Club (DMC) Page

02-Sep-2010 00:30utc

New Digital Modes Club (DMC) chat, local spotting and sked request page... http://hamspots.net/dmc/

Club membership numbers are automatically shown for local chatting callsigns. Club member callsigns in the Cluster display are highlighted and a mouse-over tooltip gives the membership number.

The page has an RSS feed for local spots with mode and frequency data.

New 2x1 Band Cluster Pages

23-Aug-2010 07:45utc

The new 2x1 Band Cluster pages provided 2 side-by-side displays of a single band. Filters can be applied to the left display while the right display will still show ALL spots for that band.

This is great for having the filtered display only showing the spots you are interested in while still having a raw unfiltered view of all the band spots and hopefully not missing that nice DX that maybe using a mode you have filtered out or the spot comes from a continent you have turned off.

LoTW & eQSL Sked and Search pages

22-Aug-2010 07:45utc

New LoTW and eQSL Local spotting, Chat and Sked request pages. Similar in function to other Club and mode pages. The Cluster display however only displays callsigns who use LoTW or are eQSL(AG), depending on the page.

New pages for eQSL(AG) callsigns search of US States or DXCC with mode and band count tables. Similar in function to the LoTW pages.

New EPC and 070 Club Chat Pages

22-Aug-2010 03:45utc

New EPC Club chat, local spotting and sked request page... http://hamspots.net/epc/

New PODXS 070 Club chat, local spotting and sked request page... http://hamspots.net/070/

Club membership numbers are automatically shown for local chatting callsigns. Club member callsigns in the Cluster display are highlighted and a mouse-over tooltip gives the membership number.

Both pages have an RSS feed for local spots with mode and frequency data.

ILLW numbers now on Lighthouse page

21-Aug-2010 02:30utc

International Lighthouse Lightship Weekend (ILLW) numbers are now included with the ARLHS numbers on the Lighthouse page http://hamspots.net/lh/

More Modes added to Cluster Filtering

20-Aug-2010 04:15utc

More Modes have been added to the Cluster Band Display Filtering. New digital modes added ... MFSK, SSTV, ROS, OLIVIA, HELL and CONTESTIA.

The Check-boxes used in the Filtering display form have changed from being "checked" to hide a mode to the more natural, "checked" to show a mode. If you wish to not have a mode displayed, "uncheck" the box.

New Cluster Band Display Combinations

20-Aug-2010 03:30utc

A new 3 band display of Cluster Spots with 8 different band combination pages.

The 2 Band display of Cluster Spots has been expanded with 4 new band combination pages.

The 1 Band display now includes the 60m band.

New "ALL Digital Modes" Page

17-Aug-2010 04:30utc

A new Local Spot and Chat page. All Digital Modes. This will cover those modes that don't have a specific page, but all other digital modes are OK as well.

Cross-posting of spots to and from other mode and club pages is enabled.

Improvements to Local Spots RSS Feeds

17-Aug-2010 04:00utc

The Local Spots RSS Feeds have changed to only include spots and chat that specify an operating mode. The normal back and forth chats that happen between users won't be included in the RSS Feeds.

This will provide more useful and timely RSS notifications on modes and bands being used without the clutter of normal chats.

Auto Cross-Posting Now Active

15-Aug-2010 07:20utc

Auto cross-posting between the Club and Mode pages is now active.
For example: If you post an MFSK mode local spot on the 30MDG page, it will be cross-posted to the MFSK page. Similarly, if someone posts a HELL local spot on the FH Club page and it is for a 30m frequency, it will be cross-posted to the 30MDG page.

Auto cross-posting works between all the Club and Modes pages. It doesn't work for the Cluster displays, only the Local Spot & Chat displays.

Spotting to the DX Cluster now available

14-Aug-2010 09:45utc

Spotting to the DX Cluster is now available!
Look for the "[POST SPOT]" link in the title bar (top right corner) of all Cluster Spot display tables on the Digital Clubs, Digital Modes, Special Activations, Single Band and Dual Band pages.

This feature is only available to users who sign into the site.

Please note: All outgoing spots to the Cluster are logged. The Date, Time, Senders Callsign and IP address are all recorded. Cluster Spotting abuse will not be tolerated.

Enjoy this new facility.

Extended Cluster Display Filters

13-Aug-2010 02:00utc

The Cluster Display filtering has been extended. Spots can now be filtered (not shown) based on DX Continent, Spotter Continent as well as Mode.

Filter selection is available under the Top-Level Settings menu, or at the direct link http://hamspots.net/set_filters/

Changed Links for 30MDG and FH Clubs

12-Aug-2010 06:45utc

Changed link for 30MDG Club --> http://hamspots.net/30mdg/
RSS link is now http://hamspots.net/rss/30mdg/

Changed link for Feld-Hell Club --> http://hamspots.net/fh/
RSS link is now http://hamspots.net/rss/fh/

Old page links will redirect to new pages for a couple of weeks, but old RSS links now no longer work and will need to be changed immediately.

New Menu Navigation Layout

06-Aug-2010 10:30utc

A new menu system for navigation of the site has been introduced. This new 2-level layout gives more room for additional pages and longer and descriptive menu labels, without increasing the screen space needed for the menu. We will be able to introduce new Mode, Club, Search & information pages easily in the future.

The new layout has been tested with the major modern Web-Browsers, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Google Chrome and IE, including the older buggy versions of IE6 & IE7.

If you experience any layout problems, please send an email, ensuring you include your browser version, and we will try to identify the problem and hopefully produce a fix.

Expanded Active LOTW Calls Search

04-Aug-2010 20:30utc

The LOTW search page has been extended to include Cluster Spot counts for all bands 160m to 6m, including 60m. This applies to both the DXCC and US State search of active callsigns known to upload to the ARRL LOTW website.
Now it is easier to locate those Stations that meet your needs, whether it is by band or mode. The last known year of log upload to LOTW is also shown and for the eQSL chasers, if that station is eQSL (AG).

New ARLHS Cluster Spots Page

25-Jul-2010 11:00utc

A new page is now available for viewing the most recent ARLHS, Lighthouse Spots. ARLHS numbers are extracted from the comments field of the Cluster spots. Look for the "LH" menu above.

New WFF Cluster Spots Page

25-Jul-2010 06:10utc

A new page is now available for viewing the most recent WFF, World Flora Fauna Spots. WFF numbers are extracted from the comments field of the Cluster spots. Look for the "WFF" menu above.

New IOTA Cluster Spots Page

24-Jul-2010 06:30utc

A new page is now available for viewing the most recent IOTA Spots. IOTA numbers are extracted from the comments field of the Cluster spots. Look for the "IOTA" menu above.

Where Do The Spots Come From?

08-Jul-2010 14:45utc

There has been much internet speculation that HamSpots gets the ROS spots directly from the ROS Software. This is INCORRECT.
ROS spots are retrieved from the DX Cluster ONLY.
This site has no relationship with the ROS software or its developer.

HamSpots maintains a private dedicated Cluster Node and processes all incoming spots to that node to determine the mode being used (ROS, PSK, RTTY, SSTV, HELL, etc.) to display correctly on the individual Mode Pages.

HamSpots also takes direct feeds from the PSKReporter Network (thanks to N1DQ) and the JT65 Reverse Beacon Network (thanks to W6CQZ).

PureBot is now blocked.

30-May-2010 09:38utc

PureBot is now blocked. I have spent the weekend researching SpamBots & Web Scrapers and how to detect and block. The people behind this sort of activity are real scumbags!

PureBot Webcrawler!

30-May-2010 09:32utc

The HamSpots Server got targeted by the PureBot WebCrawler today. Simultaneous site crawling from 100 different IPs, checking every callsign history link page looking for email addresses. Hundreds of sql queries were generated as it tried to find email addresses to be used by the spammers. All this activity slowed the database server.

LoTW Upload Year in ToolTips

23-May-2010 11:50utc

Tooltips of spotted callsigns that are up-loaders to LoTW now show the last known Year of log upload to the LoTW site.

Spot History Display Problem

23-May-2010 08:13utc

Woops! I accidentally introduced a bug into the sql query for Spot History page. It produced a wrong date-order display (oldest-first instead of newest-first). Easily fixed. Now OK.

Cold Weekend Database Work

23-May-2010 08:11utc

I have spent a long cold and wet weekend further refining sql queries, testing and altering indexes on the mySQL database. Some improvements in response times have been achieved.

New Spot History

18-May-2010 07:59utc

New Spot History (by callsign) with summary of spot counts by dxcc, mode, band & call has been added. Useful to see where and when you are being heard in the last 7 days. Search of other callsigns is also available.

LoTW Search layout improved

15-May-2010 20:00utc

LoTW search started as a standalone page with a unique colour scheme that was quickly developed to meet my need to find active Hams to complete my LoTW WAS.
It is now fully integrated into HamSpots using appropriate colour scheme and layout and menu structure. The look and feel of the page matches that of the rest of the site.

Extended LoTW Search

09-May-2010 11:39utc

I have extended the functionality of the LoTW search. It now an includes DXCC Entity search as well as the existing US State search of active call-signs in last 7 days. The results table now includes a spot-count summary of the modes used. Results data is cached (because of the high database processing required) and is updated every 4 hours.

Spotting to Cluster has been tested.

02-May-2010 11:56utc

Spotting to Cluster from HamSpots has been tested and working on my local Development server. Roll-out to the live HamSpots site may be a couple of months away as I want to introduce Callsign/Password login to avoid the type of Cluster abuse that we often see comeing from sites like DXSummit.
Use of HamSpots will still be available to users who don't wish to login, but Spotting to the Cluster will require a login.

Dedicated Cluster Node

25-Apr-2010 12:25utc

We now have a dedicated Cluster Node for all incoming and outgoing spots (no longer using DXSummit). The node uses DXSpider software. I can start on coding spotting to Cluster from HamSpots.

New caching of sql queries

10-Mar-2010 15:06utc

Added caching of sql query results which has helped reduce page load times. The cluster database typically has around one million records for a 7 day period (depending on Contest activity). Cache period is set at 2 minutes, the same as the page-refresh interval.

Redesign of HamSpots database.

26-Feb-2010 18:03utc

Major redesign of the mySQL database of HamSpots has been completed. Cluster page display times have been reduced by at least 50%. The redesign was focused on sql query performance, minimizing database look-ups and offloading certain calculation and validation of data to external processes independent on page refreshes by uses.