Overcoming Old Links in Digipan

So. It has been awhile since I started this blog. And I have been busy despite the dearth of articles to this blog. Life has a way of getting you to focus on things and this blog went by the wayside for awhile, but I'm back and wanted to share a technique I came up with for Digipan station lookups. I hope it helps you!

I have been steadily building up my station over the course of a year in ham radio. I'm still a technician class ham at the time of this writing, but I now have a nice new ICOM IC-718 transceiver and I have developed an interest in digital mode communications. More specifically, I'm into PSK31 and now that I am watching QSOs on 20 and 40 meters, I'm using software that is freely available to do just that.

Digipan 2.0

My first piece of software for PSK work, which I like for it's simplicity of operation, is Digipan. The trouble is, Digipan is OLD. Actually, ANCIENT would be more the word. And with that ancient heritage, comes the fact that the station lookup function for Digipan is broken because the URL format for lookups is now completely different since the last compilation of Digipan in 2004.

In my professional life as a webmaster and application builder, I realized that I could easily fix Digipan to work once again with a little work on using a tool to catch an inbound web request and to transform it before hitting a web site. In IIS, we use a plugin called UrlRewrite to do such things, both for inbound and outbound web requests. So, I reasoned out that it would make sense that a similar thing exists for browsers too. Since I'm a fan of Firefox, I decided to look at the optional plugin list lo and behold! I found a perfect tool for the job. (Note that there may be similar tools for other browsers, but I went with what I knew and liked for this need. The techniques used will be very similar for other similar tools and hopefully this article helps.)

Redirector is a plugin to match URLs and regex and wildcard patterns to scan for and to transform an outgoing web URL to a new form that the user specifies.

Now, how to we use this to fix Digipan?

First off, let's take a look at what happens when you do a station lookup in Digipan. Since my callsign is KK6IQK, I'll start with an example from Digipan's internally formatted URL for station lookups from 2004 to QRZ.COM.

The Firefox browser launches when I do the station lookup and heads over to the following URL:

http://www.qrz.com/callsign.html?callsign=KK6IQK

Resulting in the following display:

Now what? How can we transform the URL so it will go to the new format that QRZ.COM uses?

First step is to open Firefox and go to the Redirector plugin page and download and install it. Note that Firefox will need to be restarted once the install is complete.

Now go back and have Digipan do a station lookup again. Firefox will launch and you will get a page that shows the broken link on QRZ.Com.

Your next step is to create the rule to transform the link. To do so, make sure your "Tools" menu is available for Firefox and choose the Tools menu. Look towards the bottom and you should see an item that says "Redirector". Press it.

A new tab will open up and you will see a "Redirector" screen. Get the link from the original tab for QRZ.Com (example below)

• Original Link: http://www.qrz.com/callsign.html?callsign=KK6IQK - Place it in the example URL field

Next, we create the pattern for Redirector to use to match up links to transform:

• http://www.qrz.com/callsign.html?callsign=* - Place that in the Include Pattern field

Note that we use a wildcard for the callsign. Set the Pattern Type radio button to "Wildcard".

Now for the magic. The "Redirect to" line will transform the link while preserving the first argument of the station id as follows:

•  http://www.qrz.com/db/$1

When finished, you should have a screen that looks like:

You are done, save the rule.A new screen will appear, showing the rule you just built:

Now to test it! Your original tab with the original broken URL on QRZ.Com is likely still open. If not, you can copy the URL for my station in the old 2004 format:

• http://www.qrz.com/callsign.html?callsign=KK6IQK

Now paste it if you need to, or just reload the page. The rule should transform seamlessly. If not, go back and check the rule logic and correct any typos.

 If the rule worked, the URL will automatically change to

• http://www.qrz.com/db/KK6IQK

The corrected page, in QRZ's current link lookup format will look like this. Success! The rule works!

Now, close all the browsers and launch Digipan. Pick a station from the waterfall and then do a lookup. Digipan should be working again with lookups! This technique will help with all kinds of broken link issues with older ham software and I hope this is yet another item in your toolbox that you will use again and again!

Enjoy and 73!

Jon