[600MRG] More WSPRnet database

[Larry]

Lots of suggestions but moat are way too labor intensive for me to consider.

Thanks to John Langridge pointing me toward an archived WSPRnet forum 
post ( http://wsprnet.org/drupal/node/2350 ) I re-discovered an old DOS 
command that surprisingly still works in Windows 7 64 bit "Command Prompt".

This a very simple solution to the 6 million monthly spot file size that 
everybody with a windows computer can use. Type one line and the monthly 
file is filtered down to only 475 kHz spots and put in a separate file. 
The resulting monthly 475 file contains only a half million spots, 
easily handled by Open Office or Microsoft spreadsheet/database apps ( 
at least on 64 bit machines).

To do this simply download the WSPRnet monthly file and save it to a 
local directory. I highly suggest that the target directory is NOT on 
the C: drive. You will need to unzip the file usually to the same directory.

Bring up the windows Command Prompt app and change to the same directory 
you saved the CSV file in. Then type in the appropriate DOS "FIND" 
command with arguments.

On my computer it looks like this:

  F:\excel_files\wsprspots-2014-10.csv>find "0.475" 
wsprspots-2014-10.csv>475.csv

This command searches the file "wsprspots-2014-10.csv" and copies all 
the 0.475 spots to another file called 475.csv in the same directory.

Now you have a single file which contains all the October 2014 spots for 
630 meters. IMHO dealing with a single file is far better than dealing 
with multiple split files and using a single DOS command is a whole lot 
better than dealing with Linux.

You can also create a file which contains only spots related to a single 
station as shown here:

F:\excel_files\wsprspots-2014-10.csv>find "WH2XGP" 
wsprspots-2014-10.csv>WH2XGP.csv

Now I have a single file (WH2XGP.csv) which contains all the spots (both 
from and to) WH2XGP.

If you look up the DOS "find" command you will be able do a few more 
interesting things with it.

Now with the file size issue solved, I am faced with the task of 
creating reports detailing interesting data. So far I have spent several 
hours looking at spreadsheets and databases and have not been able to 
discover an easy way to filter/sort the data I'm interested in. I know 
it can be done but it appears to require at the minimum generating 
macros and complex database reports and I just don't have the time to 
learn that stuff.

Yes I can do simple data sorts in the spreadsheets, but I cannot count 
unique callsigns and that is one of my requirements.

A second but equally important issue is filtering out the significant 
number of bogus spots. This includes those bogus decodes that find their 
way through the simple filters inherent in the WSPR software and 
WSPRnet, plus those spots produced by people who don't realize the 
software is set to a different band then their radio is set to.

Suggestions for implementing SIMPLE and EASY ways to count unique 
callsigns in a spreadsheet (without using LINUX) would be welcomed.

73,

Larry - W7IUV / WH2XGP