Made some field tests with Polo this week for SOTA- and POTA activations and was satisfied with the onsite experience.
Just seen then at home that the software writes down the signal exchange to the comments that are transferred then to the SOTA and displayed with the QSOs in question.
I am not used to have this in the SOTA- and POTA Log details and kindly ask to make that toggleable. I suggest to have an additional switch in the settings to turn on/off that the signal reports are written to the ADIF log.
Additionally, there are maybe other elements that could be added to the comments of each QSO by own toggles like e.g. the name of the counterparty operator or their P2P reference(s) or their S2S reference. That makes it easier to follow counterparties to their references and to follow there their experience.
I had based on the Polo Manual PDF and not found there the template system explained.
Where can I find the manual for Polo templates with all possibilities and hopefully use case descriptions?
I had read that templates exist and had seen them mentioned in the app, but nothing more, since I had no hooks there how they would provide a better life for me, hi.
Markus,
I am unsure where you get a PDF version of the manual. The source of which should be the online version here.
That said, documentation for an application which is under heavy development like PoLo is always lagging well behind the changes being implemented.
The export settings provides some examples of available field values. At the moment you need to experiment a bit to get what you want.
Of course you can always open the source code in Git to get more information.
Thanks for your time. Hoping here that I’m settled after some starter questions.
My PDF was the Ham2K Portable Logger version, but the one of March 23. I’ve just tried again, since this was 3 weeks ago. Looked up “template” but only found 1 reference to something else.
But your snippet from “Export Settings” was helpful. I had to print first the full set of variables and some basic examples for each from the “Export Settings” section, to have the syntax visible for me to alter the “ADIF QSO Comments” on the same device.
Now on experimenting! I’ve tried two things to alter the default setting for the “ADIF QSO Comments” line:
One was to append {{qso.their.refs}} after the reports, to export also the partner reference resp. references. That failed, it doesn’t run. I had QSOs with partner SOTA summits and partner POTA parks, even a 2-fer, but nothing is displayed in these cases.
A second try was to clear the field content to have NOTHING on this line, i.e. no signal reports and no display of possible notes. That failed, too. I could not empty that line. Delete the variables didn’t help. Entering 1 blank (space) didn’t help, either. I had to enter 1 real sign like “.”, then only the “.” was displayed, but that was not what I wanted.
So, how do I delete correctly the variables from the “ADIF QSO Comments” line to have the signal reports away and replaced by nothing? How do I display all available partner references?
I am – probably like many users – not used or not professional enough to study/research code details at Github or other developer places. So I am always happy to have a comprehensive type of manual to alter such coding details. Or a hands-on explanation here in the user forum. Thanks for your support.
Markus,
There may well be a bug in the current version.
This goes to my points about breaking things and documentation lagging implementation.
I’m sure it will be attended to shortly.
Alan
Thanks, Alan, this is normal. Probably I am the first one to have checked out this variable.
I would estimate a possibility to leavy a template line empty and to be sure then that the software does NOT take the “s… r…” default because the box is empty.
Thanks, Alan and Sebastian - no hurry, but thanks for your open ears also in such minor details.
It certainly is okay to bring the signal reports for those requesting it, but consider that there are also others feeding the activations to a central log at home and therefore don’t need them. Btw, having had the signal reports now 3 times in the log, I must admit that this also has some advantages.
Hi all, a detail question on this topic. How is the field value (variable) for the first name of the partner operator to export not only the reports but also their first name? E.g. “Peter s56 r54”
Maybe I was not clear enough. Many here use VK port-a-log that displays the partner’s name if available from the names source and saves it even to the comments together with the reports if you wish that: “Alex s44 r55”.
I know what you mean Markus. Neither the operator name nor the name from the names file can be manipulated like that. The names file is purely a display. It is not passed into the storage file.
I maintain my names file in a similar way to the way I manipulated and managed my names file in porta log. It has 77k names in it and is just for display and assists me to confirm the caller.
Alan
I’ve understood now that this is the current scope/behavior of the software. But I don’t understand the rationale behind the complete unavailability of the name field. May you or someone explain, please?
I could follow that. I could change the partner name for a stored QSO and its display changed on the Polo screen to reflect my change. But – as understood from Alan – regardless of how the name is ultimately displayed, it is not possible to write/export it down to the ADIF file as shown in the following example together with e.g. the sent/received signal reports (as shown below in the log details for a SOTA activation):
But I’ve still not understood the rationale behind the complete unavailability of the partner names for the ADIF export of a log: is it reducing data redundancy (since the names could still be derived later from the callsigns) or data protection or anything else? Or simpler: Why is it “bad” to write e.g. the name together with the sent/received reports to the ADIF comment field?
