AMV1 Introduction

The Amateur Radio Utility v1 is a logging program designed for Windows 95 or higher. The actual product has been available since 1999, with the latest release being AMV10009. I still continue to support this product, but have no intentions to continue development. The following sections on this page explain in more detail the features of this software product, as well as instructions on downloading and installing it. Also the Delphi 3 source code for the current version can be downloaded here.

I designed and wrote the first version of this product when I was taking my UK Amateur Radio Examinations. Being interested in both programming and amateur radio at the time, I decided to work on this product, initially just as an application to use at home. I was mostly using Delphi at the time, hence the current version being written in Delphi 3. In March 1999 I released the product via my old website, under the name SRC Software. It got a good response, and there are currently about 800 registered users world wide.

Unfortunately, due to current work load I have not had a chance to do any further development on it. However, you can download the Delphi source code for the last version, and make the changes you wish to it. See here for details. That page also currently features the modules of source code that I have released up to now.

 Downloading and Installing

You can download the full version of this application from this site for free. Download the zip file for the latest version (AMV10009) from the toolbar to the left. Unzip this using winzip or alike, and then run setup.exe from that directory. The application will prompt you for various information on startup, such as location etc. Once installed, return to this page and select the automatic AMV1 registration script from the toolbar to the left (listed under Post Install). This will give you the code required to unlock the full version. Please see the links to the left in the toolbar for other relevant information and products. It requires Windows 95 or higher, and I recommend a Pentium based system, but it shouldn't matter too much.

NOTE: If you have any problems with the automatic registration script, you can just e-mail your name, city and callsign to m1bwt@slyware.com and i'll send you the required details.

This product was put through quite a lot of testing prior to release, but there are always going to be bugs in it somewhere. If you discover a bug, please contact support@slyware.com with full details. There are no planned updates for this product, but I will try to fix any bugs in the free ware release of this software. Also note that I wrote this software prior to starting my Software Engineering degree, and when I look back at some of the code it makes me cringe!

Reported Bug

There is one major bug within this software. It occurs when the user enters a callsign that starts with a country prefix not listed within the applications database. This causes the software to attempt to access an element in a list which does not exists, raising an error. However, as this operation occurs within a timer loop, large amounts of errors occur in a short period of time, and eventually the programme terminates. It is a very simple coding error :)

The bug can be prevented easily by changing an option. The option that needs to be disabled is callsign prefix identification. Click on Options, General Preferences. Then click on the Smart Fields tab, and select the entry at the top of the left list, Whole Contact. Then uncheck the 'Collect Country Information' checkbox in the right hand list. Next, click on the 'Station Call' entry in the left list, and again unselect 'Collect Country Information' in the lower right hand list. This will disable the feature, but you can still calculate prefixes using Tools, Callsign Prefix Country.

You can now change frequency allocations and add new country callsign prefixes using the AMV1 Editor Pack v1.

The source code for the v1.5 of the Amateur Radio Utility is also available! See here.