DXplorer for WSPRlite Users.

Thanks to the SOTABEAMS' WSPRlite 'matchbox' transmitters, WSPR use has grown a lot in recent years.  

A useful feature of the WSPRlites is that, as a buyer of the units, you get to use 'premium' features of the software, DXplorer, which produces plots and comparisons of your data with others'.

Some months ago, I was told by the then managing Director of SOTABEAMS, Richard Newstead, that the company was no longer maintaining the DXplorer site.

DXplorer is useful for quick comparisons with others, although I was always a critic of the use of arithmetic mean for these particular calculations, something which SOTABEAMS refused to accept.

This week, with DXplorer taking a very long time to produce any output, and often simply returning a 'timeout' error with no output, I contacted SOTABEAMS to advise them of the problem, hoping that they might at least want to get the site back up and running properly, even if they no longer actively maintained it.

This time, under a new Managing Director, I was told that the company is in fact still maintaining the site, just "not as a high priority at the moment."  

OK, these problems do occur, not least when they rely on the WSPRnet database, which itself can often hang up badly or completely - although that hasn't been the case for front-end users this week.  And SOTABEAMS do seem to be willing to address the problem.

But I am a little uncomfortable with so many WSPRlites having been sold to the world, only for the seller to then see support for all the users of those products to be sent down the priority list, such that the site doesn't work, and needs us to prompt them to do something about it.

There is also a question as to what extent the advertising of WSPRlite units on the SOTABEAMS website might be said to be in breach of UK advertising rules.  There is the clear association of the WSPRlites with 'premium' access to DXplorer, effectively meaning that buying a WSPRlite is also buying that access to the software.  Put another way, if you don't buy a WSPRlite, you do not get that 'premium' access.  

SOTABEAMS' website (accessed 08UT, 18/11/20) clearly shows it is marketing WSPRlites partly on the basis of full access to DXplorer - which it now says is a site of reduced maintenance priority.

 

If the software doesn't actually work, or is allowed to deteriorate without any attention being paid to it in reasonable time, then is that a breach of advertising rules?  Only the Advertising Standards Authority are authorised to judge.  

Certainly, it leaves a bit of a bitter taste in the mouth.  Whilst we can do our own manual analyses of data, DXplorer certainly does - or did - make a huge improvment in the efficiency of those analyses.  So its present moribund state is a cause of considerable disappointment, especially when SOTABEAMS has a good reputation of trust - on which I hope the new MD understands he really does depend.

The obvious solution to these kinds of problems, though less welcome, is to ask for a modest annual subscription for software use.  This is something I've also argued should apply to WSPRnet, which has plenty of its own problems from time to time.  

The other solution, which also gets around the problem of the ham community being dependent on proprietary software that might later be abandoned, is to make DXplorer and its ilk open source.