Re: [IRCA] [Tvfmdx] How do you keep track of your DX Loggings for AM, FM etc?

["Jim Renfrew" <jrenfrew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim Renfrew, Holley NY

I use Excel spreadsheets for LW, MW, FM, TV and SW.  When I shifted to Excel 
for my MW logs, it was many weeks of typing entries.

Since I have lived in this area since 1976 there is no need to note my 
listening location.  My logbooks previous to 1976 in other locations were 
handwritten in order of frequency.  Excel , of course, allows for 
re-ordering the log by any category.  I keep it in chronological order of 
the reception dates as the default.

I do not link to anything outside of the spreadsheet, though it would be 
cool to do so, especially recordings or TV photos.  I'm afraid that such a 
project must wait for my next life.  I'd have to trawl through miles of 
casette tapes, recoirding them to computer sound files, and then figuring 
out how to link them.  If I had started from scratch linking recordings to 
the log that would have been much easier.  But my DXing began 20 years 
before I owned a computer.

Here's how I set up Excel columns for MW:

1.    RECORD NUMBER (this is, in effect, the chronological order)

2.    QSL    (one star means "sent:", two stars means "barely verified", 
three stars "mostly verified", four stars "fully verified", special suffix 
in this column is T = taped.  In the FM log the additional suffix of S = RDS 
Decoder screenshot is used.  In the TV log there are separate columns for 
QSL and PHOTO, Q = sent and QSL = received.  "PHO" means good photo, "pho" 
means I'd love to have a better photo than the snowy one I've got!  By the 
way I use a slip in photo album for TV, the top spot on each page is the 
photo, and the bottom spot is the QSL.  This album is organized in channel 
order.

CHANNEL/FREQUENCY  (In the TV log there is also an offset column and now an 
additional column for the false channel. e.g. WGRZ is received on channel 33 
but still brands itself as channel 2.

CALL LETTERS (call changes are also listed as separate entries, in smaller 
font and with italics)

COUNTRY (I use the ITU three letter country abbreviations)

STATE/PROVINCE

LOCALITY

ANTENNA AUTHORIZATION (Medium Wave only, D-1, U-3, etc)

DAY POWER        (In the FM and TV log there is one POWER entry)

NIGHT POWER     (In the FM and TV log there is also a HAAT entry)

DATE

TIME    (Glenn would shudder, but I've always used ELT.  I think UTC is 
better, but I'd have to go back and convert thirty six years of times and 
dates in 2400 entries to fix this)

COUNTY    (I actually have a US counties map in which I color the counties 
received, so I like to know this information)

MILEAGE    (mostly included on the FM and TV logs, not so much used in the 
MW log)

In the FM and TV logs there is also a column for MODE, e.g., Tr, Es, Ms, 
2Es.  In the FM log there is a column for PI CODES.

In the SW log there are a number of transmitter location unknown entries. 
When the transmitter site is somewhat speculative I enter it in small case.

There are many other things that could be added, like transmitter 
coordinates (see previous comment about my next life), actual transmitter 
location, network (this is included in the TV log), and  additonal info like 
previous call letters, something about what I heard at the time or the 
prevailing conditions.

My only other log book is for Newfoundland DXpeditions.  This is somewhat 
chaotic, in that I am still reviewing Perseus files from 2010 and 2011.





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