[OKDXA] Ham Alerts

[Mark Beckwith]

> Does anyone use Ham Alerts?


Only yesterday I used Jeff's excellent "Where's the DX?" post to encode 
triggers for them into my HAMALERT profile.  I have been using HAMALERT 
for a couple years because it cuts to the chase and tells me what I 
really need to know, all with a CW notification code, from my pocket, 
wherever I am.  Long version: I turned 65 this year and decided to 
retire, and decided to be that guy who keeps an eye on spots and drops 
what he is doing to go in to try and work a new one in the middle of the 
day.

HAMALERT is a great app.  I am 100% Android at N5OT.  It works great on 
my Samsung-Galaxy-whatever-it-is.

I should state clearly my needs are modest.  My interest in Jeff's list 
represents a major ramping up of my "paying attention" level. Up until 
now, I have used HAMALERT to keep track of my best buddy, David, N6AN, 
who in retirement chose to become a huge ham radio Mountain Goat in the 
worldwide SOTA dogpile.  He puts summits on the air probably every other 
day when he's got up a head of steam.  I never tire of taking a break 
around here, going out to the shack, and working him just so he knows 
his 5 watts are making it to Oklahoma and we get to say hello to each 
other.  David and I met operating Field Day in 1973 way up at the top of 
a mountain ridge with the West Valley ARC in Southern California.

As I write I have just been notified that A25R is on 15 meter CW. /(Got 
him there yesterday, haven't turned off that trigger!)/

During contests when I am at home and my goal is to get on the air and 
talk to my friends and give them a point, I have all those guys already 
encoded into HAMALERT as triggers.  The triggers are usually sleeping, 
but I wake them up for contests and get those notifications all weekend, 
so I know when 8P5A has just changed bands to 160 meters, for instance.  
Also the old PJ2T club I try to get on 6 bands whenever I can.

I turn them off after the contest is over, and turn my SOTA friend back on.

Regarding the app and their support environment, only this week I got on 
their support forum and asked if the spot triggers could be sorted 
because I'm starting to amass quite a list of triggers (which as 
mentioned are mostly asleep but they are still on my list in my profile) 
and wondered about easier ways to find particular triggers.  In less 
than a day, the builder of the app himself responded (Manuel HB9DQM) 
that although I can't drag and drop triggers into desired orders, he did 
design it to where it sorts by a particular field, so knowing that, I 
can encode that field in a way that it sorts the triggers however I want.

"Now that's service" and it's nice to know there is an app that is not 
so big you can't just get an answer to your question.  Cool that the 
boss took my call.  So ... correct, it's not perfect, it's free, for 
hams by hams, and all that.  It's also not full of ads and other 
revenue-driven and spy-ware overhead like most "free" apps.  It's just 
the DX you care about. /(That also makes it really fast.)/

Point of clarity: there is a phone component and a desktop component.  
At N5OT getting DX spots on the desktop is mostly useless/pointless but 
where I need them is on my phone.  Conversely, setting up the triggers 
on the phone is an exercise in frustration so I do all that on the 
laptop.  But that's perfect.  So I tell it what to do on my computer, 
and it sends DX info to my phone.  Sync'd up and integrated.  What's not 
to love?  A25R is still on 15 CW, FWIW.

So - HAMALERT at hamalert.org is highly recommended here at N5OT.  I 
notice Brian's original question is about "Ham Alerts" but I'm thinking 
we are talking about the same thing?  If we're talking about different 
things then my comments do not address his question.

Check it out: https://hamalert.org

If it frustrates you, I can probably help since I've been using it to do 
all of the above for a couple years.

Happy Thursday,
73 - Mark N5OT