I had good intentions...honestly. But, work picked up at a frantic pace and my good intentions went by the wayside. Nevertheless, finally time has permitted me to get started.
The first program that I took a look at was AALog. AALog doesn't appear to be widely used in the US, but it does appear to have at least a small following. I once saw a pie-chart of the most popular logging programs (probably out-of-date) and, surprisingly, AALog has a large user-base in Europe which, if I think about it, perhaps should not come as a complete surprise, since the developers live in Europe.
AALog is available as a demo - I think it runs for 30 days - but to be fair, I decided to go ahead and purchase it. It costs a reasonable $49, but anyone interested should be cautioned that there are a number of add-ons available, both from the developers and other vendors, that could bring the cost significantly higher. In its basic form, however, it is quite competent for both casual users and power users. The version I'm using is the most recent version available for download, v3.0.
If you think that AALog is a simple program that isn't worthy of attention, you're selling yourself short. It has a wide range of features that rival any other program available, although, as mentioned before, you may need to purchase one of the add-ins to accomplish what you wish to do. Most of the add-ins seems reasonably priced. More on that later.
AALog has an interesting QSO interface that can be tailored to suit your needs. The main QSO entry page has enough fields to satisfy most users without having to tab over to other sections. But if you like to add other information, such as power, radios used, antennas, etc, there are sections available. One thing that I like about it is that each "child" window is separate. What I mean is, there isn't a main or primary window that all the other windows must fit in. This allows you to drag certain elements, like previous QSO's or the telnet window into other areas of the screen, perhaps even to another monitor.
AALog natively supports eQSL and LOTW. AALog will connect to LOTW and upload or download your confirmations without a lot of user intervention. This isn't always perfect, however. I find that if you have had the program running for a while it will download the latest confirmations but will fail when it tries to update your log. It will ask you for confirmation of each and every QSO. If you have a lot of QSO's, that's not something you want to do. If you exit, restart AALog, and go through the same process again, it will work fine. Odd and kind of aggravating.
Another quirk is that AALog doesn't seem to retain the correct setting when you change the country for a particular callsign. For instance, it always recognizes K5D as being from the 5th call zone, instead of Desecheo Island, even though I've changed this in the country file AND added it as a special callsign. That can be aggravating. It WILL correct the QSO's I've already logged for K5D, but if I enter the callsign as a new QSO, it will revert to thinking it is from the US zone 5. This shouldn't happen.While we're on the subject of quirks, AALog uses OmniRig to interface to radios. This seems to work reasonably well with my radios, but there are times that it sets the radio a few Hz off frequency. I've tinkered with the polling rates, but can't find a solution. Not a show-stopper, but a little frustrating. Clicking the spot a second time always sets the radio to the correct frequency.
There's no way to set alerts of specific stations, at least not anyway that I could find. And when totaling your stations worked, for LOTW or DXCC or WAS, sometimes the totals shown don't agree with what's displayed in the log. But this isn't the only logger I tested that seems to have trouble with that. Still, this needs to be addressed.
Now for a potential show-stopper...
Perhaps the biggest knock on AALog is a glaring lack of help. Literally. There is no English language help file. If you check out their website, it says, "Coming Soon". But that has been posted now for nearly a year. There are help files available for other languages and I've even used Google to translate them. Unfortunately, these files are very incomplete and in all cases quite out of date. I don't have high hopes for the English help file to be...helpful. If click on "Help", nothing happens.
So, why is this only a "potential" show-stopper? Well, the program is very intuitive and you can learn it rather quickly even without a help file. In cases where you're stumped, persistence usually pays off, but I found it helpful to write down certain steps until I became comfortable with doing them. There is 'some' help available via the Yahoo groups site. The Yahoo user group seems somewhat active and I received a fairly prompt answer to a question that I posted from the developer. There's still a language barrier somewhat on some of the replies.
So, why is this only a "potential" show-stopper? Well, the program is very intuitive and you can learn it rather quickly even without a help file. In cases where you're stumped, persistence usually pays off, but I found it helpful to write down certain steps until I became comfortable with doing them. There is 'some' help available via the Yahoo groups site. The Yahoo user group seems somewhat active and I received a fairly prompt answer to a question that I posted from the developer. There's still a language barrier somewhat on some of the replies.
So what does it do really well? The program is quick and I didn't witness any pauses when adding QSO's, clicking on spots (aside from the off-frequency problem), it interfaces well with other programs, and the interface is reasonably attractive and useful.
There is a built-in QRZ feature that also includes a few other services to look up calls. It actually works pretty good and it is integrated into the main logging window.
AALog provides a useful and effective way to search or filter your log. You can search for individual callsigns or filter your log to show only QSO's based on a wide range of criteria. In fact, it may have had the best filtering method of any logger I tried. This feature is quite powerful and allows you to easily make modifications to multiple QSO's easily and quickly. And, AALog foloows standard Windows practice and allows you to select multiple QSO's by holding down the shift or control keys. Very nice.
AALog provides a useful and effective way to search or filter your log. You can search for individual callsigns or filter your log to show only QSO's based on a wide range of criteria. In fact, it may have had the best filtering method of any logger I tried. This feature is quite powerful and allows you to easily make modifications to multiple QSO's easily and quickly. And, AALog foloows standard Windows practice and allows you to select multiple QSO's by holding down the shift or control keys. Very nice.
The telnet works quite well once you figure it out. Again, the lack of help caused me some delay, but eventually I worked through it. Adding new telnet sites is easy and I like that it allows you to show spots by band. If you wish to cull spots down to a particular mode or where they're from, for instance, you can enter commands manually. You can also specify your own commands for built-in pushbuttons and label their function. Nice. If a spot is entered incorrectly, however, there's no way to delete it until it "times out", which at least you can set the time out period.
There are several add-ins that are available that complement AALog, available from and written by the same folks who created AALog. Also, there are some programs available from the fine folks at Afreet Software, the same folks who make DXAtlas. Bandmaster is a bandmap that has some really nifty features, including spotting history. Ionoprobe interfaces with AALog to show propagation. There are several others that I didn't try, including interfaces for digital modes. Almost all of these "add-ins" do have a cost associated, so if you're comparing to other programs, be sure and tally up all the extra costs for things you might be interested in. In other words, if you compare the bare offerings to, say, Ham Radio Deluxe or the DX Labs Suite, in order to reach their level of usefulness, you'll be out some cash.
When I first downloaded and tried AALog I really thought that I had found a hidden gem. It seemed to offer enough features to satisfy me, it was fast, it was reasonably priced, but the lack of help and the quirks that I noted above were enough to make me start looking elsewhere again. I'll say this, when the next version comes out, I'll check it out again, it shows that much promise. So, how did AALog measure up to my 10 requirements? All in all, it probably rated a "5" out of 10.
There are several add-ins that are available that complement AALog, available from and written by the same folks who created AALog. Also, there are some programs available from the fine folks at Afreet Software, the same folks who make DXAtlas. Bandmaster is a bandmap that has some really nifty features, including spotting history. Ionoprobe interfaces with AALog to show propagation. There are several others that I didn't try, including interfaces for digital modes. Almost all of these "add-ins" do have a cost associated, so if you're comparing to other programs, be sure and tally up all the extra costs for things you might be interested in. In other words, if you compare the bare offerings to, say, Ham Radio Deluxe or the DX Labs Suite, in order to reach their level of usefulness, you'll be out some cash.When I first downloaded and tried AALog I really thought that I had found a hidden gem. It seemed to offer enough features to satisfy me, it was fast, it was reasonably priced, but the lack of help and the quirks that I noted above were enough to make me start looking elsewhere again. I'll say this, when the next version comes out, I'll check it out again, it shows that much promise. So, how did AALog measure up to my 10 requirements? All in all, it probably rated a "5" out of 10.
