Calllookup Version 1.5.X Jeff K. Steinkamp, N7YG

Transcription

1 Calllookup Version 1.5.X Jeff K. Steinkamp, N7YG This Amateur Radio utility will provide a call sign lookup facility for the user based upon current data from the FCC data archives. The program will lookup up data, on-line via the authors call sign server, or from a locally generated database. Currently, only US call sign data is supported, but a planned update in the future will allow access to the QRZXML service for those with a paid subscription to this service If Internet access is available, the on-line option will provide the most current lookup results as the authors call sign server is updated on a weekly basis. In the event Internet service is not available, such as a hamfest of local club meeting, then the local database option will provide results, but the currency will depend on the date of the last user data update. Configuration: From the options menu, select Configuration to display the configuration window as show at the left. Enter you location in either Latitude and Longitude, or as a Maidenhead Grid Square. Terminate each entry with the Enter Key. Entering a Grid Square will automatically compute your Latitude and Longitude. Entering Latitude and Longitude will automatically compute the Grid Square. These values will be used to compute beam headings and distance along with Sunrise and Sunset values. Select a method to calculate distance measurements as Statute Miles, Nautical Miles or Kilometers. Select a data source from either the Authors Callsign Server or from the local database. The check for update box is not yet an active feature, but will be added at a later date to inform the user of any program updates that may become available. Click the OK button and you are ready to lookup call signs!! If you have selected the Local Database option and the program did not download

2 and format the local database on the first run, select Local Update from the file menu to download and build the local database. Depending on the speed of your computer, this could take anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes. This data is derived from the data used in the call sign server which is updated on a weekly basis. Call Sign Lookups: Simply enter the call sign in the call sign box and either press the enter key or click the search button. The program will then search the database using the following algorithm. It will search out that call sign which is flagged as Active in the FCC database. If a record is found, those results will be displayed. If a record is not found, it will then search through the previous call sign records for a match, and if a match is found, it will then search again based on the current call sign that matches the previous call sign record and display those results. If multiple records are found for a search, then a list of active call signs will be displayed in the search results list box for you to choose from. Click the call sign of interest and those results will be displayed. Wild card characters can be used in your search request to find multiple records. The following characters are supported: % _ *?. _ and? : will substitute any character in that specific position including no character. N7Y_ will find results for N7YA through N7YZ and N7Y. % and * : will substitute any character in that position and subsequent positions following the wild card. N7Y% will find results for N7YA through N7YZZ and N7Y. Be cautious when using wild card characters as you may retrieve many more results than you banked on. N% will retrieve every call sign that begins with the letter N. This action will bring your machine to it's knees while attempting to fetch so many records. We will revisit the wild cards later in this document. Batch Processing: This is a process where a file of call signs can be specified, along with a delimiter or separation character, and that file will be processed and produce a comma separated value (CSV) file of all of the stored data for each call sign in the file. The resulting CSV file can then be imported into most spreadsheet programs for further processing. The two common input file formats will be the CSV format where the list of callsigns are separated by a comma and the file is terminated with the End of Line (EOL) character, or the in-line format where each call sign is on a desperate line in the file. The delimiter for this type of file will be the EOL character. Clipboard Processing: For a single set of results, you can copy all of the data that is displayed, or just the address block to the system Clipboard for transfer to other programs using the cut, copy, paste functions of your computer. The clipboard functions are available from the Options menu and have short cut keys

3 defined. Background Color: From the options menu, you can specify a user defined background color for all graphical windows that are provided by the program. This only changes the background color of the windows and does not affect displayed text which will alway be black. Look and Feel: Look and feel is actually a theme that is applied to the graphical user interface windows. Each operating system, Windows, Linux and Mac, have their default Look and Feel, and that will be the default the first time the program is run. Three other Open Source theme are proved as standard themes in Java Metal, Nimbus, and CDE/Motif. Select the theme you like the best. I prefer the Nimbus theme over the others. Advanced Searches: This extremely powerful option allows you to defines a set of criteria to search for and display the results in a table. A solid understanding of boolean logic and string comparison will be beneficial in defining search criteria. Some rudimentary knowledge of Structured Query Language (SQL) constructions will also be extremely beneficial. The figure below shows the search window. This particulate search displays all the licensed hams with a last name of Hall and living in the city of Tucson.

4 The SQL Statement box shows the SQL text that was formulated by the selection of fields and their values from the Field selection list box and the comparison operators on the right. Before we get too involved with creating a search, we need to discuss the comparison operators ( =!= <= >= Like). Equals (=). In this case you are comparing a field to be exactly equal to the text you have type. This is a case sensitive comparison. The word HALL, Hall and hall are NOT equal comparisons. Not Equal (!=). Use this to exclude something from your search results. If you want to exclude all Extra Class licensees from your result, you could use this comparison on the Op Class Field selecting E as the text to exclude Less Than or Equal (<=) and Greater Than or Equal (>=). These operators will only be useful when doing date comparisons on the 4 date fields. These operators will be beneficial to the club users in locating licensees that have recently performed some action to their license, or locating individuals whose license may be expiring in the near future. Like. This operator is similar to the Equals operator, but it functions without out case sensitivity. If you plan on using a wild card in your search criteria, then you must use this operator as the wild card operators does not normally work with the Equal operator. To perform the search in the example above, first click the clear button to make sure the SQL result box is clear of any previous search criteria. Since we are searching for the last name of Hall in the city of Tucson, we will need the Last Name field and the City field. We could even add the state if we wanted to narrow that search to Tucson, AZ, but I do not believe there is another city in the United States named Tucson. In the field list, scroll down and find Last Name and click on that field to highlight it. In the search box to the right, type in the name hall. Select the Like comparison operator then click the add button to add that request or filter to the SQL results box. In the field list, scroll down and find City. Overwrite the text in the search box with Tucson. Select the Like comparison operator and click the add button. We are not going to use the state field. Click the Execute button to perform the search. Within a couple of seconds, the result table will fill up with your requested results. A quick word about Counties: On the main search page I do include the county for the individual. The FCC does not include the county in their data, so I have a county lookup table that is based on a zip code. I chose not to include that in the advance search because of speed issues when a search request would return a lot of results such as a search of a zip code in a large metropolitan area. If you wish to search for licensees in a county, then search for multiple zipcodes.

5 This is where the ADD and OR operators come into play. In the above discussions, we have been using the ADD operator for our search. Basically, as long as each field request is equal, a result will be returned. In the case of a zip code search, we want to use the OR operator. If any of the field request are equal or true, then return a result. As an example. Assume we want to search for all licensees in zip codes, 46851, and In a nutshell, if the stored record has a zip code of 46851, OR OR 46858, return that record. To make that search happen, click the clear button to start with a clean SQL statement. Click the OR button. Scroll down and find the Zipcode field. Type in in the search box and click add. Do the same thing for and When finished click the Execute button and await for the results. This search resulted in one licensee from each zip code in Ft. Wayne, IN. The results of your search can be exported to a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file for import into other programs such as a spreadsheet or database that supports CSV imports. Click the Export button and give it a filename to include the extension of.csv and click OK. The table will be exported to the file using the standard CSV definition of fields separated with a comma, fields enclosed with

6 quote characters and each record terminated with the system wide End of Line (EOL) character. The advanced search tool is a very powerful tool if used correctly. Search results are stored in memory as they are accessed from the data file. There are close to one million records in this database and if you select a search criteria that results in a very large number of results, you may exceed your free memory and crash you machine. This program, unlike others program of similar nature, will run, out of the box, on Windows, Linux and Mac because the underlying development of the program is Java. Java is available on every computer platform that is available today and if Java is not installed on your computer, it is a simple mater of installing the latest version from the main Java website. I provide this software to the Amateur Community free of charge, but I am not releasing the source code at this time. If you find this software to be useful in your arsenal of radio related software, please consider making a small donation to my PayPal account to help defray the cost of the development environments I use to produce this software.