This is the TARS Robot for calculating end of year awards. It can be used for more than this if you regularly upload and check your progress. This can show where you are not doing so well as you thought.

How did it come about?

G6GLP didn't fancy the idea of filling the paper logs that have been in use for many yeas and still continue to be available should you wish to do a hand entry.

The Robot was built for single use by G6GLP but it became obvious that with a bit of security it could be made available to all. So log in scripts and user levels were implemented. and all this was back in 2010-2012.

Take up has been slow partly because so few do contesting and enter the end of year awards. The other reason is the usual inertia to change by some of the older members.

Problems cropped up from time to time as with all software projects but they where sorted in a day or so of being raised. Interestingly bar far the majority of problems are users logs. The main one is login non dxcc calls like D1 etc.

A major implementation was the introduction of the SK_PFX award by Stephen Reading G4LZD now SK. This award is quarterly.

Another major change occurred when support bracket for the fan on the processor broke and cooked the cpu. This change required a new PC motherboard and unfortunately the OS had moved on so had MYSQL and PHP so the old code wouldn't run on the new system. So I had to set about a major update of the scripts to change all the deprecated lines. Eventually the system was back up. No data was lost just some down time of the system.

There is a list of problems found / fixed since then see Issues/Problems on the main menu. A number were caused by the upgrade and missed on the initial review of the code.

The latest addition is the FT8 / MFSK stats. There is no current award in TARS for this mode but in an effort to improve users participation the pages show either the number of contacts or DXCC per band per month. The page is public so all can join in and with the addition of the UDP upload making no need to log in to participate it is hoped more will join in.

The UDP will take an adif line of multiple lines and ad them to the users call in the ROBOT. There is some confusion on how and where to configure users systems for this so there are a few pages explaining what toe set up for WSJT-x JTDX and for those who use Log4OM with all the integration a set up for that as well. If there is a call for another logging program support then contact contact G6GLP.