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Updates for 2010: The basic program is the same, but I shortened the height of the main window so that it would fit comfortably on the 1024x600 screen of my Acer Aspire One netbook. I also processed the frequency and schedule databases from Eike Bierwirth and included them, as separate "all" and "English only" importable .csv files. This data is vastly more complete and accurate than the "public data" files available from www.hfcc.org. Now all we need is sunspots!
I wrote this software, called Radio320, to meet my personal approach to using the RX-320 receiver. I offer it to the shortwave listening community as freeware -- if you like it, fine; if you have suggestions for improvements, fine; if you don't like it, I don't want to hear from you <grin>.
The software takes a dramatically different approach from other radio control software: there are no graphics. There is a spectrum analyzer / scanner graph, but no clever, graphical tuning knobs and such. I focused entirely on usable functionality rather than pretty-stuff. The software is built around four types of databases; you can make any number of these databases, but only one of each type will be active at any one time.
Frequency List: this is the standard freqency/country/station reference list. You can access it by frequency or by country/station.
Time Schedule: this database is oriented around program broadcast schedules. It is sorted by starting time (and can also be viewed by country/station/time).
Hot List: this database serves as "infinite VFO's" and "scratch paper." It has frequency/country/station/time entries that can be viewed in any order. You can do 1-click transfers from the tuning dial or any of the other databases to this one.
Reception Log: this adds a Y2K-compliant date and room for notes, so you can log what you've actually heard. As with the Hot List, I've made it very easy to transfer entries from the other databases to this one. You can view this by date/time, frequency, or country.
Radio320 is a 32-bit application that has been tested under Windows95, Windows98, Windows/NT-4.0/SP3, and Windows/XP. It was designed for a 1024x768 screen resolution, but supports scroll bars and works passably well with 640x480 and 800x600 screens.
The scanner / spectrum analyzer (see main screen shot at top) displays 5 scans of a given SW band at the same time. It was designed to help me spot new stations which I want to investigate. You can save the scans to disk, so you can compare signal conditions from hour to hour or even month to month.
To make tuning easy, the radio can be tuned directly from any of the database entries by clicking on the frequency, or by moving to a frequency entry with the cursor keys. Here are a few more ease-of-use short-cuts:
The databases are X-base compatible, and the indexes are generated in FoxPro CDX format. The naming conventions will become evident as you browse the databases. The "structxxx.dbf" files supplied with the program document the format of the databases (and are used to create new ones, so don't tamper with them!). The databases support import/export from/to comma-delimited text format.
Unzip the program into a working directory and just run the Radio320-V2.exe program. You can make yourself a short-cut using the Windows Explorer. No fancy install is provided or required.
I converted the frequency/schedule databases to a comma-separated-values format that can be directly imported into the program. There are 4 files in the .zip file: frequency and schedule data for "all" broadcasts, and frequency and schedule data for "English only" broadcasts. Unzip this file into the same directory as the program. Then use commands on the File menu: New Database, followed by Import Database. After loading new databases, you will have to exit the program and restart it -- an artifact of my upgrading the database to Version 5.1 of Apollo.
The software was developed using Borland Delphi 5. It uses the Apollo 5.1 database engine (free runtime DLLs included) from www.vistasoftware.com, and TurboPower's Async Professional for serial port components (free runtime compiled in). If you have an interest in the source code, please email me.
The software is free. However, I would appreciate a short email from anyone who tries it out. Perhaps the ego-stroke will motivate me to make lots of enhancements :)
Comments and suggestions? See contact information here.
Enjoy!