E1593: Can This App Make Logging Radio Contacts EASY? - podcast episode cover

E1593: Can This App Make Logging Radio Contacts EASY?

Jul 05, 20258 min
--:--
--:--
Download Metacast podcast app
Listen to this episode in Metacast mobile app
Don't just listen to podcasts. Learn from them with transcripts, summaries, and chapters for every episode. Skim, search, and bookmark insights. Learn more

Episode description

Discover the latest World Radio League software updates unveiled at Dayton Hamvention 2025! Our exclusive YouTube interview dives into new features, enhanced band condition tracking with real-time A, K, and SFI metrics, and more. Perfect for amateur radio enthusiasts eager to stay ahead with cutting-edge tools. Watch now to explore how WRL is revolutionizing ham radio! #HamRadio #WorldRadioLeague #DaytonHamvention2025

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/ham-radio-2-0--2042782/support.

Transcript

Speaker 1

World Radio League is my current preferred logging software, although Sebastian keeps trying to get me tried to Polo. I know there's a lot of them, so I really like this one because it's so easy to saint between your phone, your tablet, your computer, multiple computers, multiple platforms and operating systems.

Speaker 2

So James is going to tell us about updates today. So what are you guys working on right now?

Speaker 3

Okay, awesome, Well, you can see the platform over here, so you guys are probably mostly familiar with the basic interface here at World Radio League, and so we've we have new releases almost every single week.

Speaker 2

So I'm just going to go over with you guys some of the latest stuff.

Speaker 3

Okay, first, this is not super new, but I think one of the coolest things that I'll just show really quickly is that we do have a band conditions widget we've added on our mobile app.

Speaker 2

Okay, if you.

Speaker 3

Download the mobile app and you just hold down the icon, it'll expand out and you can get a real time band conditions update widget on your mobile app.

Speaker 2

I've got to put that on. Super cool. Okay, as you can see right now, the bands are trash. Yeah, so I'm giving you a real demo, but it's super cool.

Speaker 3

And as Jason mentioned, one of the really nice things about World Radio League is everything sinks from your phone to the web app, so you can go online offline on your mobile app, and then when you get back to your computer at World Radio League dot Com, everything's gonna you know, sync. So just to give you a quick demo of that, I can come into my mobile app here.

Speaker 2

And I can select a park.

Speaker 3

Maybe I want to activate US nine four four six, which is close to me.

Speaker 2

Here, I click create logbook. Now I'm in and logging.

Speaker 3

Now I'm gonna go ahead and I'm just gonna drop a contact into my log I'll look up Professor Jim and for a BFR, I'll hit enter.

Speaker 2

Now I've logged in.

Speaker 3

Now what you'll notice is, yeah, so as you can see, I just logged on my phone, it's already on my computer here, so everything sinks across devices.

Speaker 2

I can from from here.

Speaker 3

Also you can auto spot yourself over to pod Uh you've got your park to park, and then everything is super easy to export over to the Poda site as well.

Speaker 2

So it's really a purpose built general logger. Pode a logger.

Speaker 3

But you know, we want to kind of focus on some of the things that are new that are coming out with a log or two, so I can give you a rundown of a lot of those things, which if you come into the contest page, that's where you're going to start to see a lot of uh new

action here within World Radio League. Okay, So traditionally, if you're you know, using a law a logbook for contesting, you had to uh go into the logger maybe download a specific uh you know plug in for that contest, or you had to configure your log book with a template for that contest. With World Radio League, we've made it really easy to participate in contest because you've got

basically your entire contest calendar. So I can see, you know, cq Worldwide WPX coming up, I can see all the QSO parties or field Day of course, this is probably one of the most popular. Yeah, so to join field Day with World Radio League, all you do as you click in, you click and roll into the contest and then it generates you a log book that has the correct template in the exchange for each contest. So this has your class and your section in the case of

field day. But I mean you could even add because we have this quick settings, you could even add a PODA on top of this, so you could do a contest and a PODA at the same time if you wanted to, and it'll continue. You know, as you're logging, it generates you your map, you have your spotting built in, all those awesome things that you want to see as

you're going as well. So I know for a lot of us, like you'll, you'll pop on, you know, you're doing a PODA and you hear some contest going on, You're like.

Speaker 2

What is this right now?

Speaker 3

Yeah, it kind of makes it easier to note, number one, what contests are coming in, or even if you're just a casual contester, pop in and grab a couple a couple of qusos.

Speaker 1

So what if what if you're operating as a club and you want three or four or five guys all log in to World Radio League to log it as the same call sign.

Speaker 2

Yeah as and you can one hundred percent do that with World Radio League.

Speaker 3

So you just create a club account within World Radio League and then use the same logbook, and since it's all cloud based, all your contacts will go into the same logbook, and that also helps you with the duplicates, right, and then if somebody else in your club is logging the same contact, you don't end up doing it.

Speaker 2

So, okay, I'll give you a good example.

Speaker 3

Of that is we did a really big we did a really big event for a winner field day. Oh yeah, and so I can pull up the past results here. So we had you know, almost one thousand people, nine hundred and forty one people, seventeen thousand contacts logged. And if you go into the leaderboard, a lot of the people are the clubs, right, the Miami County Amateur Radio Club.

Speaker 2

They actually came by here yesterday and.

Speaker 3

They were just talking about how much fun they're group of young kids actually that were running that station. And you can see the leaderboard, and when you see somebody in the leaderboard, it's I mean, this is complete real

time contesting. So you know, traditionally in contest, you go in and you log your contacts, you download your eight if you submit it, you know, maybe you go to thirty eight thirty and you you know, you kind of see the rumors of the contest score and it gets adjudicated and all that.

Speaker 2

But within world Radio League everything.

Speaker 3

Since we're really a cloud native platform, everything's happening in real time. Every contact that gets logged is going straight onto the leaderboard and you can see the stats of other operators as well, so that's big. Integrations are also fairly new. We got cat control, now we've got wsjt

X integration. And since this is Jason, just to give you guys a little bit more info, QRZ and LTW integrations are top of what you're going to see next on the integrations we are Those are going to be today you can of course export and import into those, but with the next release at QRZ and LTW integrations are just going to be running in the background, so you don't have to do anything.

Speaker 2

To upload to those services.

Speaker 3

One other thing I think I've would love to tell your followers, Jason, this is about WRTC twenty twenty six. Oh right, yeah, So, I mean this is like the Olympic Games of ham Radio that's happening next year and you're going to have fifty teams, you know, like about one hundred operators from all over the world competing for twenty four hours to basically be the top ham radio contest in the world, and after a big evaluation process, the wrt team selected World Radio League as the official

technology partner. They saw what we were doing with the live contesting so far and they wanted us to bring that type of interface to the World Radio Team Championship in twenty twenty six.

Speaker 2

So we are going to building.

Speaker 3

A completely custom dashboard and contesting experience. So and it's not just for those you know, fifty teams that are contesting. When people are at home, there's going to be a face a you know, user facing side where you can say, hey, I want to try to work all the WRTC stations. I want to see how I'm doing against other people. So we're still a year out from that, but you're going to see a lot more about WRTC twenty twenty six as we start to get closer.

Speaker 1

Good, what's the status of the desktop app?

Speaker 3

The desktop app is in testing. We've got it, We've got it working internally, but we have to just battle test the heck out of that thing. Taking a little bit longer than we thought I would still, you know, if I had to give it, if I had to put an estimate and on it, I'd say a month out. But if the desktop app isn't out in two months,

I would be shocked. Okay, so I would you know, best guest a month longest guest two months okay, and yeah, desktop app coming, so that at the you know, right now, you've got your web app you can log into, You've got iOS, Android, MacBooks, that's the one platform that it doesn't run on natively yet.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah, okay. Well, the desktop app will also.

Speaker 3

Be offline, offline capable from day one, yes, right from day one.

Speaker 2

Right, I'll have offline call signed.

Speaker 1

Database too, right exactly because a lot of people, you know, they go out to PDA or even Soda and there's no there's no internet signal out there. So a lot of people won't use a cloud based service because of that, and I understand that. So it'll be uh, it'll be nice to see when that happens.

Speaker 2

All right, man, I hope you have a good show. Thanks for your time. Yeah, thank you, Jason Ye

Transcript source: Provided by creator in RSS feed: download file
For the best experience, listen in Metacast app for iOS or Android