Monthly Archives: December 2011

Create a Google Map of your ADIF Contacts

About 1 year ago I created a post about Creating maps of ham radio contacts utilizing Ham Radio Deluxe. That process required using Ham Radio Deluxe as well as having some way to host the generated KML file. Well recently I’ve switched to using DXLabs suite of ham radio logging applications and the feature to create maps isn’t yet part of the suite. So what’s a ‘ol developer to do but go ahead and write his own solution. So here I’m announcing the available of a web application that reads in an ADIF file of ham radio contacts exported from your logging program and a way to create a Google Map showing those contacts. ADIF to Map is now available.

The ADIF to Map web application requires your logging program to associate a latitude/longitude or grid square with each record. Most logging programs allow you to capture this information (lat/lon and/or grid) but it normally needs to be entered by you or populated via a callbook such as QRZ or HamCall to name a couple.  I use QRZ and their XML subscription service ($29.95/yr) and it’s well worth it. If you don’t make a lot of contacts, some programs support population from QRZ without a paid subscription but the number of lookups is limited. Without a latitude/longitude or grid square associated with each contact, there’s nothing to map.

ADIF is a standard format used by most all logging programs to import/export data.  You’ll need to find out how to export an ADIF file from your specific logging program. Over time I might add some steps for the more popular ones to the FAQ, but there are so many different logging programs in use I wouldn’t be able to keep it up to date. When you export an ADIF file, you’d create a local file on your computer, so note the location of that file.

Click to enlarge

Once you have the ADIF file local on your computer, visit  ADIF to Map and click on the Choose File button and select the ADIF file. There’s an option to specify your home QTH as some logging programs don’t export the information. If you’re not sure or want to specify your home QTH grid square, enter it in the box provided. Once you’re ready, press the Upload and Map button and depending on the size of your ADIF file it could be a few seconds to a couple of minutes before you see the contacts displayed on a Google Map.

Click to Enlarge

Hopefully the map displayed your exported contacts, but if you received unexpected results, check the FAQ for some ideas on why. Each point is clickable and will display the call of the station and depending on the data available in the ADIF export also the QSO date,time, band and mode of the QSO. There’s also a link under the map to display the map in a larger view which will give you a full screen Google Map of the same data. There’s also a link to save the generated KML file to your local computer. This is the file the web application creates for Google Maps needs and can also be read by Google Earth if you have it installed on your local computer. The created KML files used to map your contacts are stored only for 1 day, so if you want, save a copy locally. You can always re-upload and map your ADIF file.

As a reminder, each contact record in your logging program needs either a latitude/longitude or grid square associated to it which should be exported in the ADIF file by your logging program. If that info isn’t there, nothing will be mapped.

I’ll be adding some additional features to the application as well as handling any reported errors you might find. Though ADIF is a standard, there are likely different logging programs that interpret that standard slightly differently and I might need to adjust the application to support it. If you find something that isn’t correct, please let me know by referencing the FAQ on The application generates an error.

I hope you enjoy the application and please provide me with any feedback you have or issues you encounter.

73 & Happy Holidays!
K2DSL

2011 ARRL 10m Contest Summary

This past weekend was the ARRL 10m contest. It starts to become a tough time of year with the holidays approaching to spend a large chunk of time at the radio. Last week I wasn’t home all weekend and couldn’t operate, missing out on the TARA RTTY contest and the inaugural 10m RTTY contest. For this weekends 10m contest you can work any station anywhere as a contact. Each phone/SSB contact is 2 points and each CW contact is 4 points. Multipliers are US States, Canadian Provinces and Mexican States as well as each DX entity (outside of the US, Canada and Mexico). I operated both CW and SSB though more on SSB.

Friday night I didn’t turn the radio on at all, but things were pretty good on Sat morning after I woke up. Conditions seemed ok, but not the great 10m conditions from the contests in November.  I make a comparison like that, but I don’t even have to back a year and 10m was completely dead, so I am thrilled with the current conditions. About 3pm I needed to head out for some holiday shopping and after I got home I only made a few additional contest contacts.

At 7pm ET (0000z) on Saturday night, I stopped contesting, fired up the DX cluster and noticed a spot for Ethiopia. I was able to make my first contact with a station in Ethiopia with ET3SID on a DXpedition. It wasn’t a contest contact but I got them on 20m phone on Saturday for a new one in the log. According to the N2OO QSL page, N2OO will be handling the QSLs for ET3SID and ET3AAA during the November 2011 DXpedition. There’s an OQRS link near the top of the page if you want to go that route.

Sunday I got on a little later in the morning and conditions seemed a bit worse than they were on Saturday. I heard fewer European stations and just fewer stations in general. It did seam like almost every other contact was with a station in Texas. I ended up logging 34 contacts with Texas ops. California was 2nd with 23 Qs logged and Colorado with 17 Qs. Two surprisingly active states were 6 Qs with ops in Montana and 5 Qs with ops in Wyoming.  I eeked out a couple of contacts with nearby states but just 1 each with West Virginia and South Carolina which were the only Southeastern US states I logged and not east of Texas/Kansas/Minnesota either.

I finished up with 348 contacts that made up 63 DXCCs. That is more DXCCs logged on 10m in a few hours than I worked in my first 3 years of operating combined. You can see almost a vertical line where the contacts to the East (Europe and 1 in South Africa) were and nothing was past there. Nothing past Hawaii either and I don’t think that was a very easy contact at the time either. I did happen to follow a fellow NJ operator K2DLS a couple of times and maybe he followed me a couple of times. Sometimes logging K2DLS and then K2DSL trips up some ops, but I didn’t notice any hesitation when it happened this weekend.

Map of all contacts (click to enlarge):

 

Map of continental US/Canada contacts (click to enlarge):

 

Here’s my score summary. Mults are the US/Canadian/Mexican States + DX Entities:

 Band  Mode  QSOs   Pts Mult
   28  CW      87   348   43
   28  USB    261   522   88
Total  Both   348   870  131

Score : 113,970

1 radio, 100 watts and a 10m wire dipole is sure a lot of fun!

73 and Happy Holidays!
K2DSL