5MHz Experiment Data
This page and it's links comprise the main tables (on the left-hand panel) that make up what is called the consolidated database of the Station Logs and files produced through automatic monitoring of the 5MHz Beacons. This part of the web and the tables themselves are in an early stage of development, so readers and users of the data will need a little patience. There are a small number of errors and omissions in the table which have yet to be corrected. These are mostly due to keying errors and possibly due to processing the data. Hopefully, both the presentation and data integrity will improve with further work. It is therefore sensible to check for the latest version of the tables before any serious analysis is undertaken. Error reports can be sent to 5MHz_Working_Group@rsgb.org.uk. IntroductionThe database has been developed using MS ACCESS. It is already too large to sensibly offer as a download, so instead the main tables are offered in CSV format, which are relatively small files. These could be uploaded into any relational databasing application such as MySQL, ACCESS, etc. for subsequent analysis and processing. The CSV files can alternatively be individually imported into a spreadsheeting application for viewing and data manipulation and processing. The opportunities for experimentation with the data are huge.Work is in hand to port the database tables and its queries to mySQL that will be served online. The development of this is more or less complete (late November 2007) and should be online for development purposes before the end of the year. The plan is to have it hosted within the RSGB domain probably starting around March 2008.The only proviso with use of the data is that due acknowledgement is given to "RSGB 5MHz Experiment", which is a simple shorthand the many who have contributed to the creation of the data, either though just operating on 5MHz, designing, building and hosting beacons, though submitting their Station Logs, or though offering their output files from automatic monitoring of the beacons. Current status of the databaseManual MonitoringThe database uploads have been few and far between since mid-summer on account of three factors. Firstly, an error where duplicate records were identified was spotted; this took some time to find a good automatic solution to correct the error. It was corrected in the database update published in mid-August. Since then problems finding effort to key in paper logs, and time spent working on some verification software delayed the update until mid-November. As of 3rd December 2007 there are 48,333 QSOs or beacon reports in the table that contains data from the Station Logs.; this is an increase of 4,380 since June. All are encouraged to submit their 5MHz logs, see link for further information. The following two tables show the breakdown within this table. The first table shows how many times each station has been logged in the database (it almost certainly includes some incorrectly logged calls):
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