Preliminary thoughts
A few weeks ago, I did a Mini-Rove of ATNOs (All-Time New Ones). When I say ATNO, I’m talking about for the WWFF program, not POTA. By this time, I doubt there’s any new parks to activate in the continental US for POTA.
WWFF however is a different animal, as it seems pretty popular over in Europe, but not so here in the US. They still have lots of new parks to light up, and most all will also count for POTA as well.
I went out on a Sunday afternoon, and lit up two parks which were both ATNOs. This was partially cause I wanted to head out to play radio, but mostly cause I wanted to do a review on a new open source logging software, which I’m really enjoying.
It is called Ham2K Portable Logger; PoLo for short. It is a free download from the Apple App Store, and will run on iPads , iPhones, and I’m sure (though I’ve not tried it) that it’ll run on a Macbook.
Looking at his website this morning, I see that you can also download it from the Google Play store. It also says that he is working on a Windows version.
Looking at the screenshot above, you’ll see that it puts all the fields that you may interested in right there on the main screen. You can also spot yourself, grab spots and add it to your logging window.
Another plus for PoLo is how it handles multiple operators (or multiple parks). Rather than entering all the info twice, just enter both the callsigns, with a comma in between. Same thing for N-Fers; just separate them with a comma.
As you can see from the above screenshot, you can filter the spots window. It can be filtered by band & Mode. Once you click on a spot, it populates your logging window using the spot info. After you log the contact, the spot gets lined out on your display.
Another option if you don’t care to se the spots is the Map window. You can view it either as a sidebar, or expand it to a full screen view if you wish (See Below).
PoLo is written by Sebastian, KI2D. According to his website, it supports POTA, SOTA, WWFF, Field Day, Winter Field Day, and many more. There’s no cost whatsoever, except for a voluntary “Buy me a coffee” link on the website.
Speaking of the website, here’s the link – https://polo.ham2k.com/.
Try it out, I bet you’ll like it as much as I do.