Gray Line Ham Clock

Introduction

Thank you for installing the Gray Line Ham Clock application for Windows 10 and 11.

The Gray Line Ham Clock application is designed to run on all screen sizes and allows you to configure the location and size of each functional widget.

General users and enthusiasts can use the large date, time, map, and other scientific widgets to observe the Earth's gray line, sunspots, and data. Amateur radio operators can additionally use the DX Spot widgets to see how signals are propated around the Earth for themselves or other DX stations.

The widgets are:

Gray Line Ham Clock with PSK Reporter reception reports.

After Installation / Widget Designer

After installing, the UI widgets are in their default positions, as seen in this image with a 2560x1368 monitor screen resolution. If you have a smaller resolution, the lower widgets may be off the screen.

Gray Line Ham Clock widgets in default positions.

The widget positions are likely not optimal nor desirable for your particular needs. To change the size and position of the widgets bring-up the Widget Designer via the following menu items shown in red.

Gray Line Ham Clock widget designer menu.

The widget designer appears on the right hand side of the app and allows you to choose which widget to move around and resize. The widget in focus will have a gray outline around it.

Gray Line Ham Clock widget designer. Gray Line Ham Clock widget ready to move.

Move and adjust each widget to your desired location and size on your screen by clicking the up, down, center, left, right, height, and width buttons. Use the Center button to quickly orientate the widget into the middle-of the application. If you need to return a widget to its default position, click the rest button for an individual widget or reset them all. You can move a widget off the screen also if you do not want to see it.

Settings

The Settings page can be reached via shown menu button and is where you can specify and see:

Gray Line Ham Clock widget ready to move.

In the following sections, more examples will be given for each functional area.

Name and Callsign

In Settings, you can specify your callsign or name that gets displayed on the main page. Here you can see I provide my name and selected Royal Blue as the display color.

Settings name callsign location.

As specified, the text and location shows up on the main page. In the Widget Designer you can specify the font size from 4 to 1000.

Main page name and callsign location.

Date and Time

In Settings, you can specify the date and time format and color to be displayed on the main page. Here you can see I selected the format, RFC1123 GMT, for GMT time that most amateur radio operators use during operations. To the right, the date and time will be displayed with the choose format and color.

Settings date and time.

Per those settings, you can now see the current date and time being displayed on the main page - in this case, I have made the text font size 50, nice and big. In the Widget Designer you can specify the font size from 4 to 1000.

Date and time on main page.

Globe

Two map projections are available - 3D globe and 2D Mercator. In Settings, you can select either projection in the Map section. Use the Widget Designer to adjust the map's width, height, and position as you desire. You can zoom in and out on the map. The map has a layer added to it to show city lights and also the gray-line showing the Earth's shadow of the Sun. The gray-line shadow moves automatically throughout the day and year as the Earth orbits the Sun. Below are examples of each projection, first Mercator and then globe.

2D Mercator. 3D globe.

Solar Flux Index

For the Solar Flux Index widget, there is nothing to specify in the Settings page. Solar flux is a measurement of the intensity of solar radio emissions with a wavelength of 10.7 cm (a frequency of about 2800 MHz). The A and K indices are a measurement of the behavior of the magnetic field in and around the earth. The widget displays these values with an additional colored bar graph. For HF radio, a solar flux index value of 160 or above gives rise to preferred conditions for distance (DX) contacts. The Solar Flux Index widget refreshes data once an hour.

Solar Flux Index widget.

I usually place the Solar Flux Index widget on the right-hand side of the map as shown below.

Solar Flux on main page.

WWV Report

For the WWV Report, there is nothing to specify in the Settings page but can have the location and size adjusted by the Widget Designer. The WWV Report is a text-based notification prepared by the US Department of Commerce, NOAA, and the Space Weather Prediction Center. The report specifies the issue time, applicable day, the solar flux index, and estimated planetary A-index value. In addition, it describes any space weather that has occurred in the last 24 hours and predicted for the next 24 hours. The WWV Report widget refreshes once an hour.

WWV Report.

DX Spots and Signal Reports

The DX Spots widget lists, filters, shows, and quantifies spots that are sent or queried by several aggregation systems used within the amateur radio community. These systems provide a fantastic opportunity to see what stations are heard, communicating, or observing your or other's signals around the world. Data shown in a spot includes:

Before configuration, the DX Spots widgets looks like the following. All of the fitlers are checked On, default colors are assigned, and no statistics.

DX Spots.

You will want to proceed to Settings to define and configure these items:

Most DX data sources, for example DX Clusters, require you to login with your callsign, so specify your callsign and attest that you are a licensed amateur radio operator.

DX spots logon.

By default, the WA9PIE DX Cluster is configured for use. The hostname and port to be used are in the following fields and get updated when you select a new source.

DX spots default.

Other sites are available including DX Spider, POTA, PSKReporter, and Reverse Beacon Network sites. You can also select the user defined entry and include your own hostname and port.

DX spots sites.

Click the Test Connection button to verify you can do a basic connection.

DX spots test.

You can specify how many spots to show on the map at any one time from 1 to 500 with several increments. And, you can specify what color line is used for each of the amateur radio bands, 2200m to 3cm, for the map and the spot widget listing.

DX spots lines.

Back on the main page, the DX Spot widget will look like this the following image. Note the title now contains the location chosen as the data source. As spots arrive, the matching band and mode filters tally values increase one per spot. The spots are listed with the newest at top and older spots scroll downward. The spot's background color matches what was chosen in Settings as well as the tally background. Also provided is an overall tally of spots, how many match the filters, unique callsigns, and what callsign has been the most popular for a configurable time.

DX spots main.

As show above, the DX Spots widget allows you to filters spots by:

Select any combination you want; though, you will need at least one from the band and one from the mode or callsign-in-spot text area.

For PSK Reporter spots, queries are only allowed to the PSK Reporter backend once every 5 minutes. Be sure to place a callsign in the callsign-in-spot text area. This callsign will be used to query for signal reports. If no callsign is provided, the last 20 seconds of signal reports for any callsign will be returned. If a callsign is provided, the last 5 minutes of data is returned. Every change in filters will cause a new query to the backend and if there are more than a few, you will get a Too many queries. message in red requiring to wait 5 more minutes. Just get your desired callsign entered and it should continue working well on the next query cycle as seen below.

DX spots psk reporter.

Same callsign and results shown on the map follow.

DX spots psk reporter.

Logs

The Logs widget allows you to import your Amateur Data Interchange Format (ADIF) files and displays the contact grid locations either with a 2x2 grid or a line from your station to the DX station.

Click on the Load Logs button to select your files.

Logs widget.

Select the files you desire to load.

Logs widget.

After loading your log files in, some statics are displayed such as how many unique grids were found, the closest contact distance, the farthest contact distance, average distance, and count of invalid log entries found.

Logs widget.

Here is the map with just grid squares.

Logs widget.

Here is the map with both grid squares and lines. Sometimes, if you have a lot of contacts, displaying the lines becomes a bit busy-looking on the screen.

Logs widget.

Lastly, you can use the Remove From Map button to remove the squares and lines from the map.

SOHO EIT Images

Each of the four NASA SOHO Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (ETI) 171, 195, 284, and 304 Angstroms images are available to place on the main page. The SOHO images show the Sun's corona activity in particular corona mass ejection (CME). There are no particular settings to configure in the Settings page. If you reduce the size of each image less than 250 pixels, the title text will disappear for your convience.

SOHO images.

QRZ XML Subscription Service

For regular DX spots (not Reverse Beacon Network nor PSK Reporter spots), the application shows amateur radio station locations for their country based upon the capital of the country. If you subscribe to the QRZ.com subscription service, sold separately on the QRZ.com website, the application can retrieve more exacting locations for display on the map, if available.

In Settings, include your logon credentials below, specify a test callsign, and click the Test Connection button to see if it all works. If the query to QRZ.com works, you will see a green message denoting the time the query suceeded in addition to the subscription expiration date, general message, error message, and the callsign which was queried and returned name, latitude, and longitude. If there is an error, a yellow message denoting details will be shown.

QRZ XML Service.

As stated, if you do not use the QRZ XML subscription service, regular DX spots will be show per the country's capital, as seen in the below bitmap - you can see that all the USA spots are going to Washington D.C. the capital of the USA. Note again, Reverse Beacon Network nor PSK Reporter observation spots do not have this problem because the grid locator is supplied in those spots.

No QRZ XML Service.

If you do have the subscription spots that can be retrieved via QRZ.com and have specified location data will be shown around the country, as seen below - you can see that spots are showing for different locations around the USA.

Yes QRZ XML Service.

Weather

The weather widgets can display over 50+ weather satellite and space weather images from the GOES-16, GOES-18, METEOSAT, NOAA DSCOVR EPIC series of satellites, plus others. Each weather widget will update once an hour. Note that some images may not be updated at this same interval from the provider while others are updated more quickly. If you reduce the size of each image less than 250 pixels, the title text will disappear for your convience.

Weather widget.

In Settings, each of the weather widget can be configured to show any of the available satellite images by specifying the image from the drop-down list. When chosen, the image will be displayed to the right in a 200x200 pixel sample.

Weather widget.

For weather only enthusiasts, you can even display just one, two, or three of the weather widgets as seen below.

Weather widgets 3.

Alerts

If you want an alert for a particular callsign or DXCC country entity, you can specify the callsign (or text that will be seen in a spot) and/or select one of the many DXCC entities to show an alert in the top-middle area of the application. This is a great way to monitor for your needed DXCC entities and be notified when a spot is given for it.

In Settings, you will see the following Alerts section. As you can see, 4U1UN is selected as a string to be recognized within any spot. As well, several DXCC entities are also selected.

Alert settings.

As spots come in, each spot is analyzed to see if it meets your selected alert criteria. If a match is found, you will get an alert at the top-middle of the application. For example, the country Andorra was selected and as a spot came in with C37N a match was made and shown. The background and foreground colors for the alert match the band colors you previously selected. The alert will stay viewable until you click the close x button.

Alert C37N Andorra.