Datamatrix

Award Tracking

Chase Awards? If so, ProLog's award tracking and report generator is just what you need. The ProLog "AUTO-TRAK" system automatically maintains in real-time, support for all of the major Amateur awards. You can interrogate the database and display your award status at any time. Additionally, ProLog tracks and can instantly display your award status relative to Standard QSL's, eQSL's or both combined.

For example, you are tuning the band and hear a DX station of interest, just click into the "DXCC" field in the Logging form and enter enough characters to define the prefix of the callsign and depress the ENTER key. Instantly, ProLog will supply you with a wealth of information. The "Bearing and Country Information" panel will display the country information together with the short and long path bearings, and the distance in Miles and Kilometers. The "Award Status Information" panel will display all of the DXCC prefix information including: Continent, CQ and ITU Zones, State, County, IOTA and Grid Square information.

At the top of the "Award Status Information" panel is the currently selected Band and Mode followed by a series of award listings, each horizontal award group consists of a radio-button, a primary button to display all of the entities for that award, a variable information field showing the current entity, followed by two windows labeled "B" for (B)and and "M" for "Mode". At-a-glance ProLog's exclusive "Traffic Signaling" status is conveyed through the use background coloring where Green indicates an entity that has been worked and confirmed, Yellow indicates that the entity has been worked but not confirmed and Red means that the entity has never been worked.

For example, the Award Group segment shown to below, reflects the entry of a station with a "VK" prefix. The "DXCC" group shows that you have worked the "VK" prefix before but you do not have it confirmed (Yellow) but the Red "B" and "M" indicate that this would be a new band (20M) and mode (SSB) for VK. "OC" reflects that you have the Oceania continent confirmed, while the yellow "B" and "M" show that you have worked it on this band and mode before, but you do not have it confirmed on 20M-SSB. You have CQZ-30 confirmed (Green) but 20M-SSB is a new band and mode (Red) for this CQ Zone. You have worked the ITUZ-59 Zone before but you do not have it confirmed (Yellow), and 20M-SSB is also a new band and mode for ITUZ-59 (Red). You have worked the "OC001" IOTA before (Yellow) however this is a new band and mode for this IOTA designation. You have worked the VK3 prefix before but do not have it confirmed (Yellow). Award status information colored in Yellow quickly indicates the need for insurance contacts.

The displayed traffic-signaling status is based on one of three modes "QSL", eQSL or a combination of both. The "Both" mode examines each QSL Method and displays the highest status of the two. This status is displayed instantly based on your selection and does not effect the logging process in any way.

The "Colors" command pushbutton displays a popup window containing the various color definitions. The Colors are Priority ordered. Red being the lowest and Green being the highest with all of the colors in between, reflecting various levels of QSL/eQSL Status.

With respect to LoTW, until you upload your logbooks to the LoTW website, the eQSL status will reflect Orange. After your logbooks have been uploaded, your eQSL status will change to Yellow. After you have uploaded your logbook data to the LoTW website, their system checks the callsign of each contact in your logbook to see if that station has also uploaded their logbook data. If they have not, the status of that contact remains with a Yellow status. If the station has uploaded their logbook and the contacts synchronize, you are given credit for the contact which changes the eQSL status to Purple. However, until you purchase credits from the ARRL, the contact is not fully confirmed. With that methodology in mind, ProLog lets you see at a glance which contacts have been successfully cross-checked (Purple) versus the contacts that you have elected to confirm with a credit purchase (Green). You specify the eQSL status using the "eQSL Sent" checkbox and the "R" and "C" radio-buttons in the "QSL/eQSL Panel".

Want more detail? The screen-shot shown below shows the popup window that appears when you click the "DXCC" button in the "Award Status Information" panel. This window shows all of the individual entities that comprise the DXCC award complete with the number of contacts that are contributing to the award status and the overall QSL Status for each award entity. Notice how easily you can pick out the entity that has not been worked (Crozet) in Red, and those that need a QSL Confirmation (Juan De Nova and Kerguelen) in Orange .

The window below was created by clicking on the "England" (G) entry of the above window. This window gives you a Band/Mode overview of all your contacts for the "G" award entity, including the QSL/eQSL or Both Status for each. In this case because the "QSL" status radiobutton was selected in the window above that is the status that is displayed. You can review which contact is referenced by clicking on the Band/Mode vector. In this case, a left-click on 80 meter phone indicates that "G3VCA" is your 80 SSB contact. Further, if you want, you can transfer this contact back to the logging form for editing, by left clicking on the "Edit QSO" command pushbutton.

Want the "Big Picture" overview? Clicking on the "Details" pushbutton will display a "Worked vs Confirmed" matrix showing your DXCC worked versus confirmed totals for each band and mode. Totals for each band are in the rightmost column while the totals for each mode are at the bottom. Also listed is your overall mixed status and the number of deleted countries worked and confirmed.

ProLog's powerful report generator supports the compilation of reports for display and printing that provide comprehensive listings regarding the status of your awards. These listings are generated using various input variables consisting of the QSL Method, the QSL/eQSL Status filters, and the Band/Mode filters. These parameters may be configured in any combination, thereby generating reports focused on your information requirements.

For example, if you want to know those award entities that you still need for DXCC, simply set the Band to "ALL", Mode to "MIX" and click on the "Not Worked" pushbutton. ProLog will produce an Award Status Report listing all of the DXCC prefixes that have yet to be worked.

How about a report listing the QSL's that you have sent out through the bureau for which you have not received one back? In the "QSL Status Filter Panel", simply check the "Bureau" Out Filter and the "No QSL" In Filter, then left click on the "List" pushbutton; the resultant report will list all of those stations that have not returned your bureau QSL's. Also listed, will be the QSL mailing date; important information for re-QSL'ing. You can make the report even more selective by selecting a specific Band/Mode vector, then setting both the Band and Mode filter radiobuttons to "Select".

The "Submit Ready" command pushbutton quickly lists those contacts for which you have received a QSL but have yet to be submitted for an award.

Clicking the "Matrix" pushbutton displays a complete band overview for each of the supported awards. The DXCC award is shown in the window below. Once again, the coloring of the display immediately tells the story. Each of the band vectors contains a letter that represents the QSL status of the contact for that specific band. "D", "B" or "M" colored in yellow indicates that a QSL has been sent with no return, "W" colored in Orange indicates that the station has been worked but no QSL has been sent, "R" in blue indicates that a QSL has been received, and an "S" or "A" in green indicates that the entity has been submitted or accepted for the specific award.

The coloring of the entity description indicates the overall mix status for that entity. Red indicates that the entity has never been worked, Yellow indicates that a QSL has been sent but a QSL has not been received, Blue indicates that a QSL card has been received but not submitted for award credit, and Green indicates that the entity has been submitted for award credit.

Notice how the entries for "Peru" and "Slovak Republic" all in yellow stand out as entities that are awaiting QSL Card confirmation.

Prefix Editor

The ProLog prefix editor makes it easy to add to, and modify, your DXCC prefix database whenever existing DXCC entities are deactivated or new ones are added. ProLog makes this job easy using the built-in Prefix Editor module. You can easily associate special prefixes with an established primary DXCC prefix. Simply run the Prefix Editor, search for the DXCC prefix then add the associated prefix to the table. There is no limit to the number of associated prefixes that can be linked to a primary DXCC prefix.

Optional IOTA Database

The optional IOTA database provides the user with a definitive listing of all the current IOTA island assignments and listings. When the IOTA database is installed, ProLog will automatically commence the tracking IOTA information.