WOTA RIP

You may post here if you are having problems with Winlog32 that others may be able to help you with. You may also report bugs so that the author may act upon them.
Post Reply
G0CUZ
Site Admin
Posts: 461
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2002 7:12 am

WOTA RIP

Post by G0CUZ »

Although I have not been active for a few months to keep an eye on the situation, I see that the WOTA -the 'Whats On The Air' database service has not been online the last few times I've tried it.

I have not found any definitive info anywhere about what happened but for sure it now seems that WOTA is well and truly dead.

Great pity as I spent a great deal of time on the interface from the WotaDB server to Winlog32, and I initially added it because it looked a very promising service.

The demise of WOTA has been on the cards for some time, apparently due to lack of use, it closed in early 2013 but had a short reprieve and was kept going until earlier this year, but now its gone.

Use it or loose it - so we lost this service.

I will remove the WOTA option from the next version, as far as I know, it was not widely used by Winlog32 users, so I guess it's not likely to be missed.

73 Colin
G0CUZ
User avatar
ZL3LF
Site Admin
Posts: 31
Joined: Fri May 02, 2014 10:20 am
Location: New Zealand
Contact:

Re: WOTA RIP

Post by ZL3LF »

Just curious...

What was WOTA's function / unique offering over a cluster site?

73, Chris H.
G0CUZ
Site Admin
Posts: 461
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2002 7:12 am

Re: WOTA RIP

Post by G0CUZ »

Hi Chris

WOTA was a self-spotting facility that could automatically (or manually) broadcast individual activity to other connected users, a bit like when cluster users would (wrongly) broadcast their activity, this, when in auto mode-linked to the users rig, told other users where you were (freq) and what you were doing e.g. tuning, CQing, busy etc.

Unlike DXClusters, WOTA was not just for DX.

I thought this would have been great on VHF e.g. 6m/2m bands in low activity periods but would have suited any other low activity interests.

73 Colin
G0CUZ
User avatar
ZL3LF
Site Admin
Posts: 31
Joined: Fri May 02, 2014 10:20 am
Location: New Zealand
Contact:

Re: WOTA RIP

Post by ZL3LF »

Hi Colin,

That sounds like a pretty good idea in the scheme of things, and an interesting project...

If it was a feature that you wanted to continue in winlog32 I'd be happy to build and host a web service to support it. If there is existing documentation for the WOTA api I could just knock that off to reduce the amount of work you'd have to do to point at it..

Just a thought.

73, Chris
ZL3LF
G0CUZ
Site Admin
Posts: 461
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2002 7:12 am

Re: WOTA RIP

Post by G0CUZ »

HI Chris

Unfortunately, I have not been able to locate the original documentation for WOTAdb and don't have a copy here, the original web site has disappeared, I think N3JFP (AC LOG) c2006 had something to do with the dev. originally and it feature in that software first
However as good as this was (I thought), it didn't gain the acceptance from the ham community, there was a thread c2006 on QRZ about it, I spent some time reading through that thread, and many of the OF's of the time were dead against it.

If despite this, if you are interested, then contact N3JFP, that would be a good starting point, I can figure what the interface did from my own coding but don't know anything about the server side of WOTAdb software.

73 Colin
G0CUZ
User avatar
ZL3LF
Site Admin
Posts: 31
Joined: Fri May 02, 2014 10:20 am
Location: New Zealand
Contact:

Re: WOTA RIP

Post by ZL3LF »

OK,

I might drop him a line, even if only out of curiosity.

It seems like a good idea, but I can imagine that there would be a few OF's who would oppose it for all the normal 'Why don't you tune around the bands' reasons.

Each to his own, and although I'd not be a big user of something like that myself I can see some folks would get use out of it..

73 Chris
ZL3LF
Post Reply