I’ve never seen any mention of the HAMRS app here and thought I’d share my recommendation after using it for the first time today. Full details are on their website, it’s intended for portable operation.
Today was my seventh activation, until now I’ve been writing details onto paper and have occasionally forgotten to note a signal report or time. I found the app made this very easy for me - it’s template driven and provides only the fields you need during an activation.
Upon entering a callsign it’ll lookup from QRZ the name and location of the operator if there is a mobile signal, this worked well for me today on GM/SS-260 Brown Carrick Hill.
The real benefit was when I got home and extracted the ADI from the app - upload of the log to QRZ and SOTA was an effortless exercise. I’m sure some people enjoy reviewing the QSOs and entering them, but on a compressed timeline which I usually am this was a real win.
Couple of points to note;
It isn’t free. Cost me £4.99 for iPhone and iPad. It is less on Google Play Store.
QRZ Lookup of Location/Grid Square requires QRZ API access which is a paid subscription.
It remembers your Location, Band, Frequency and Mode between QSO but somehow kept dropping the /P from my callsign. I’ll be raising this as a bug. (I fixed manually on the ADI prior to upload)
Has anyone else used the app? Or are there others that are better?
I used it, it deleted logs on me I deleted it. Good old paper and pencil never fails and The sota csv editor is great for digitizing logs and creating a adif for uploading to the database/n3fjp/qrz/lotw.
Im only 1 dissatisfied customer of Hamrs, I know lots of people that use it and love it.
I make notes on my log as I work stations, who I’ve heard, snippets of calls, interesting DX, people standing by etc.They get scribbled on the log for reference as I activate. Can’t do that easily with apps so I stick to my old school ways. It never takes long to type that log into a CSV or FLE file and I can do that in comfort at home rather than trying to type with fat paws on a touch screen in the drizzle.
I have used HAMRS for POTA for over 2 years and I have almost 800 activations completed. In the beginning there were some bugs but it is now stable in my opinion. My best advice would be to save your adi file as soon as you are complete with the activation so the data doesn’t disappear.
If you want an app that also lets you self spot, see who is active and enter a S2S (including callsign and the other acrivators summit reference) with one tap, then it has to be VK Port-a-log.
adi fIles can be uploaded straight to the database and it saves a csv in parallel, updating both files after each QSO. I use it exclusively for POTA, WWFF and SOTA as well as general /p Ops. Except when it’s raining. Been caught out by the rain once or twice!
Ive used it since last year. Really handy when uploading to QRZ. Used it for my last two SOTA activations. Although it does take its toll on my phone battery. I’ll still go old school and use a paper and pen though
Paper and pen also for me - both waterproof. I often have great difficulty typing, having a form of dyslexia, so an onsite app - while undoubtedly very good as some can be - is not for me. Even my hand-writing can often be almost illegible!
Having said that, I DO manage to use both SOTA Spotter and Sotamat on the hill, but that’s as far as I would go with an app - and in any case I find both of them challenging to use for the above reasons. But, yes, VK Port-a-log does sound like it’s a very good app…
I have now been using HAMRS for over two years and I have never had any problems with it. For my use at SOTA, I think it works great. I use a paper log and pencil when it is very cold, rainy or snowy - because then it is very difficult to get a smartphone to work satisfactorily.
