DX Database Searching
One of the primary motivations for PacketCluster is the historical capability it provides in terms of searching for DX information. This section describes the commands available to you for effectively searching the DX database.
The DX database may be searched in the following manners:
Chronologically The normal command, SHOW/DX, displays the last five DX spots by default. You may request more or less spots by specifying the number as a qualifier.
SH/DX/10
will display the last 10 DX spots. After receiving the 10 spots, you want to see an additional 10 spots, you may do this by the command
SH/DX/11-20.
DX announcements covering a specific period of time (in days) is also possible by using the format:
SH/DX/Dxx
where xx is the number of days you want to see announcements for. For example, SH/DX/D2 displays the announcements for the last 2 days.
Band/frequency You may search the database by band or frequency. The command SH/DX band/frequencyaccepts the following bands or frequencies:
160 |
1 |
80 |
3 |
40 |
7 |
30 |
10 |
20 |
14 |
17 |
18 |
15 |
21 |
12 |
24 |
10 |
28 |
6 |
50 |
2 |
144 |
It does not matter whether the frequency or band is entered. You may specify a range of frequency in the following manner:
SH/DX 28.500-28.550
You may also specify the number of spots desired in the same request.
SH/DX/10 40
will display the last 10 spots on the 40 meter band.
Frequency Range You may also display DX spots which lie between two different frequencies. For example, you may want to see all DX spotted between 14.000 and 14.025. This can be done as follows:
SH/DX 14000-14025
Prefix To display spots for a particular DX country, you can search by prefix. The general format is
SH/DX prefix
For example, SH/DX ZD9
will display the last five spots whose call begins with ZD9. Remember that you may also combine this with other search criteria.
SH/DX/15 10 YB
will display the last 15 spots of YB (Indonesia) on the 10 meter band.
Callsign Fragment Just as you can search for a station's prefix as shown in the previous section, you can generalize this to look for specified text anywhere in the callsign. This is done by adding an asterisk (*) after the text you are searching for:
SH/DX BV*
This command will find BV2A, G3FBV, or ZS6BVX
Comment Field Text The last search method is used to look for text in the comments field of the DX spot. This is done by surrounding the text with a single quote. For example:
SH/DX 'QSL'
displays the last five spots which have the text "QSL" in the comment field. This search is case insensitive, i.e. it doesn't matter whether the specified text is upper or lower case. You may search for up to three different pieces of text simultaneously. For example:
SH/DX 'QSL' 'MGR' 'VIA'
Of course, this search may also be combined with all the others:
SH/DX/15 40 BV 'QSL' 'VIA'
which displays the last fifteen 40 meter BV spots that have QSL or Via in the comments field.