Quick Start
Click the Icon or program-shortcut to start the program. You will first see a small 'Register' window, which we can ignore for now, so click 'Continue with Trial' and wait for the main program window to open.
Here we can see an upper MenuBar, with access to controls for Imported Logs, Map Features, Plotting, Tools, Export, and Help.
Below that is a line of Tabs, then the Main Window, then, at the bottom, a Status Bar.
Before going any further, let's understand what the County-Hunting Mapper program does:
1/ It can draw US State, Section, and County Maps in many different ways: continental maps, selected regions, counties within states, and others. These maps can be filled with color, or shown as outline. When regions are drawn, they are mirrored on an Online Map, from your favorite map provider: Google, Bing, Open Street Map, Yahoo, and others.
2/ It can Search for Counties in a variety of ways. The results will be shown on the 'Tables' tab. Right-clicking a line in the 'Tables' tab leads to other options, such as map-highlighting or data export.
3/ It can create empty State, Section, or County maps, and then fill selected regions or Grid Locators by clicking a check-box. This is called 'Contest Mode'. You might want to show regions worked on different bands or operating modes, so each one of those can be assigned its own column, then we can show the regions that have been map for any band/mode, or for all.
4/ It can create maps that are filled from an external logging program, such as the N1MM Logger. This is called 'External Logger Mode'. When a QSO is completed in the logger, the data sent out is examined and parsed to identify a State, Section, County, or Grid Locator, plus the band or mode that was used. The relevant region is then filled in, and you can choose to display the regions worked on any individual band, or on all. You can show a map of a single state: this is ideal for QSO Parties, or you can show a Joint Region that represents multiple states in one QSO Party, such as the New England QSO Party, or you can even show the complete continent, for the MARAC Contest, and watch a continent of counties filled in automatically.
5/ It can import Cabrillo or ADIF logs, and see the States, Sections, Counties, or Grid Locators identified for each QSO, with the band or mode that was used. A summary of the logs is provided, that shows a variety of details about the entries in the logs. You can then choose to plot those logs on one of the maps, by filling States, Sections, Counties, or Grid Locators on continental or individual state maps. Once identified from their codes, the county names and states are allocated to their own columns. These can then be exported to form a permanent record for counties and states that have been worked. Two sample logs are included - they are useful to experiment with, but please replace them with your own logs whenever you want.
6/ Perhaps you are a Rover Station, and saved your route as a GPX track or waypoint list? You can import those lists and plot the points out on either of the maps, comparing the positions with a state or county underlay.
7/ Export is available, of course: we can save the map images in a variety of image-formats, suitable for printing or using on a website. We can also export the logs with their identified counties, or export the tables for other uses.
8/ All settings are configured with sensible default values, so you don't have to worry about clicking the wrong thing and causing a problem. Any action that does delete data will aways ask you to confirm your choice before proceeding.
Enough talking: lets see the program in action. Chose the 'Map Plotting' tab. On the left are two panels: the upper one draws continental maps, and the lower one draws individual state maps, or maps of combined regions.
Click the first button 'Show all States on a Continental Map', and the tab will swap to 'Vector Map' to show a simple filled state-map, with each state colored in one of 4 colors. You can zoom in or out using the Up/Down buttons in the top-right corner. To reposition the map, just left-click anywhere on the map, and that point will be used as the map-center. If you click on the land area, you can notice that the State and County corresponding to the center-position are shown on the Status Bar, at the bottom of the window. You can also see the position of the mouse, with bearing and distance from your Home QTH, or any other reference position that you choose.
Above the map is a box marked 'Grid Lines'. Click it and choose 'LatLon Lines: Auto'. This will draw lines for latitude and longitude who's spacing is determined by the current zoom.
There is a list of States in the panel to the left of the map. Right-click any line for further options.
Click the tab marked 'Online Map', and assuming that you have a connection to the internet, you will see a map of North America, with the states filled with the same colors as used in the 'Vector Map'.
Return to the 'Map Plotting' tab, and click the 'Show a State Map and Add the Counties for the Selected State'. We get the same continental map of states, with added counties for Alabama. Choose a different state, if you wish, in the 'Selected State' panel.
How about adding some text? Click the 'No Text' box above the map and select 'County Code 3 chr'. You can change the Font Size by using the control to the left, currently marked '6'. To the left of that are radio-buttons marked 'S' and 'C'. When 'S' is selected you can add text for State or Section. When 'C' is selected you can add text for Counties.
The panel on the left of the map now shows the Counties for the State that you have selected. Right-click any line for other features.
Now lets try a continental map of Counties. Return to the 'Map Plotting' tab, and click the 'Show All Counties on a Continental Map with County Background'. Notice that it is marked 'Slow', as there is a lot of drawing to be done, so it may take a few seconds to show the map, dependent on the capabilities of your computer. You will also notice that Zooming and Re-Centering are slower too. The panel on the left shows County-names sorted alphabetically by name. Click the 'State' header to sort by State.
Click the tab marked 'Online Map', and assuming that you have a connection to the internet, you will see that the Counties have been filled on that map as well, though as the '20m' data set was used, the accuracy of the county lines is not suitable with a high zoom-value.
Plotting all the States might be useful for a MARAC Contest, but most of the time we are just interested in the Counties in a selected State. On the 'Map Plotting' tab, click the 'Show a map of all Counties for the Selected State'. This time, we only show the Counties for a single State, and the list on the left just lists the Counties for that State.
Lets try Searching. Click the 'Search' tab to go to that page. Hopefully the options are fairly self-evident. Enter 'was' (without the quote-marks) in the 'Search Phrase' window, and click the 'Search button. As the default Search Option is 'Within' we will perform a search for any County Name that contains the letters 'was' somewhere within a county name. The results are shown in the 'Tables' tab, along with other attached values from the database. Click any of the column-headers to sort the table in the order of that column. Right-click a line for other actions.
Next, lets look at Contest Mode. This will draw you a Continental map, or selected State map, or Joint-Region map, or Grid-Locator map. You can then fill in regions by clicking a check-box. Fills are differentiated by columns, which you can assign to whatever you like: bands, modes, whatever. You can then choose to display all the contents form a selected column, or all of them together. Go to the 'Contest Mode' tab, and leave all settings as they are for now. Click 'Start Contest Mode' and you will see a blank map of Alabama, with all the Counties colored the same. The counties are also listed in the table to the left of the map, and adjacent to them are three columns of checkboxes. Click any of the checkboxes, and the relevant county will be filled with a different color. Also, the column totals shown in the StatusBar at the bottom of the window will be updated. At the top-left of the map is a box marked 'Cols: Any'. The 'Cols: Any' setting means that if any checkbox on a line is checked, then the region on the map will be filled. Click the 'Cols: Any' box and select one of the other options. You will see how the fill on the map changes to reflect only the values in the chosen column. As before, you can add text or GridLines if you wish.
If you have chosen to plot Counties, there is another control at the top-left of the map, marked 'Name'. This refers to the current contents of the first column of the left-hand list. You can change it to show the 3, 4, or 5-character codes instead of the county-name.
To clear the filled regions, return to the 'Contest Mode' tab and click one of the buttons in the 'Clear Checkboxes' panel. Values are retained in the database even after you close the program and restart it.
Whilst looking at the map, you can export its current contents, with whatever text or grid-lines are showing, by clicking 'Export > Save Vector Map as Image' in the upper Menu. The 'Save As Type' line in the panel that opens lets you choose between different image formats.
The next tab is marked 'External Logger'. This is very similar to 'Contest Mode', except that instead of clicking checkboxes to fill areas on the map, we let incoming QSOs from an external logging program do the job for us. At the moment, only the N1MM logger has been tested, though any logger that can send the same XML UDP messages as the N1MM will work just the same. To test it, leave all the settings as they are at the moment, which will be appropriate if you were working the AL QSO Party on 6 bands. Click the 'Start UDP Mode' button and the program swaps to the 'Vector Map' tab. Just like the 'Contest Mode' you can see 6 columns of checkboxes, but if you try and click one, nothing will happen. They are set by incoming QSOs, not by you! Zoom in the map, set the text and gridlines as you like, then, when you are ready, click 'Start' in the top-left corner. The program is now waiting for incoming QSOs.
To show the 'External Logger' mode working, you need something that can send QSOs via UDP. The N1MM logger works fine, of course, but if you don't have it set up, you can use my UDP Contest-Simulator. This is an included program that simulates a variety of contests, including State QSO Parties. To start it, click 'Plot > QSO Party Simulator'. Leave all the settings just as they are, then click the 'Start Random Contest' button. It will start broadcasting QSOs for AL Counties on 6 bands. Return to watching the 'County-Hunting Mapper > Vector Map' and you will see the incoming QSOs reported on the StatusBar. As the counties are parsed from the QSO, the relevant county on the map is filled in, and the relevant checkbox for the band that the QSO was worked on is checked. Column totals and unique counties are shown below the list. If you want to change the way the map looks, click 'Pause' to stop responding to UDP QSOs, and the upper map-controls will be made available again.
Next, we will check out the Log facilities. The County-Hunting Mapper has two independent logs, marked 'Main' and 'Auxiliary'. There are some fictional QSOs loaded into both of them, so that you can experiment with some of the facilities.
Click the 'Main Log' tab and you will see an import from an ADIF log, where county values have been picked out of the 'CNTY' and 'MY_CNTY' tags. The actual tag contents are shown in the 'ExchR2' column, and if parsed correctly, will be placed in the State, Section, County, or Grid columns, dependent on the contest-type and what its contest-exchange is. The way the County was identified is mentioned in the 'Cnty Frm' column. Lat/Lon values are derived the county center-points.
You can scroll up and down the log with the scrollbar on the right, and sort the log using any of the column values, by clicking the gray header of the relevant column: click once for ascending, or click again for descending order.
Right-click a line in the log for further actions.
For a summary of either of the logs, click the 'Log Summary' tab. Choose which log you want to examine by clicking the radio-buttons in the 'Select Log for Summary' panel. These summaries are created on-the-fly, so might take a moment if the log is a large one. There is much information shown - it should be fairly self-explanatory.
We can also plot the log. Remember that this is the 'County-Hunting Mapper', which deals in States, Sections, Counties, and Grid Locators parsed from QSOs, so the only things that get plotted for each QSO are those items identified in them, not the home position of a callsign. Click the 'Log Plotting' tab, where you will see a variety of options. Choose which log you want to plot in the 'Select Log for Map Plotting' panel, then whether you want to plot the Counties, States, Sections, or Grid Locators in the 'Plot Counties, States, Sections, or Grid Locators in the Log' panel; then choose 'Continent' in the bottom panel to show items on a continental map. Click the 'Plot the Log' button, and the 'Vector Map' tab will show, with a continental map showing the chosen items found in the selected log.
The checkbox columns adjacent to the list show the bands, modes, or confirmed status for each item. The pink color indicates that the checkboxes are locked, as they are purely reporting the contents of the log. If you want to change a value, you will have to edit the log. This can be done on either of the Log pages by right-clicking the QSO line and choosing 'Edit Line'.
That covers the basic introduction of the County-Hunting Mapper. For information about other features and for in-depth details of all the program facilities, please see the individual topic pages.