Stations can send their location information using Check-In and other forms. Some Winlink clients have no ability to extract and use this information (for example, by displaying it on a map). If such a client saves the emails as separate text files in a specific directory, this python script can scan the emails, extract station positions and display this information in an easy to read form. It also can create waypoints file in the GPX or KML format. Both of them can be used by a variety of GPS/Mapping software to visually put the stations on a map. KML file, for example, can be used with Google Maps.
If you specify your own position, the report will include direction and distance info for each of the Winlink stations. An example below is based on an actual report with call signs partially scrambled and latitude/longitude positions rounded for privacy reasons.
$ python wipe.py -d 7 -q FN03gu $PATINBOX
Specified QTH coordinates are:
Latitude: 43.80000
Longitude: -79.40000
Scanning emails sent on or later than 2024/10/21 13:47 (UTC) ...
Total emails processed: 154
Emails scanned for position info: 15
Position entries extracted: 10
Callsign Date / Time Latitude Lognitude M.Grid Dist(km) Azimuth
------------ ---------------- ---------- ---------- -------- -------- ---------
VE3XX 2024/10/23 13:14 43.80 -79.00000 FN03ht59 7.5 111 E-SE
VE3XXX 2024/10/22 21:57 43.90000 -79.00000 FN03gx09 16.3 350 N
VA3XXX 2024/10/23 20:56 43.6000 -79.000 FN03hq55 19.7 160 S-SE
VA3XX 2024/10/23 19:27 44.00000 -79.00000 FN04di76 59.0 342 N-NW
VE3XX 2024/10/22 12:16 44.0000 -78.00000 FN04no50 93.8 30 N-NE
VE3XXX 2024/10/23 19:35 43.00000 -80.20000 EN93vd54 99.4 217 SW
VE3XXX 2024/10/23 21:55 44.00000 -78.20000 FN04ve16 104.8 69 E-NE
VE3XX 2024/10/24 09:28 46.000 -77.0000 FN16fd25 295.6 31 N-NE
VE3XXX 2024/10/23 21:21 45.00000 -75.60000 FN25dg86 339.2 64 E-NE
VE6XXX 2024/10/23 14:22 53.00000 -113.7000 DO33di37 2706.1 279 W
Note, that one of the parameters for calling the wipe script includes an environment variable $PATINBOX. I found it convenient to set it up pointing at the PAT inbox directory. That way you can reference it without the need to remember its location.
The code is released under the MIT License.
The script is called wipe.py and it supposed to run under Python 3. There is no special installation necessary, just copy the script into the directory of your choice. You will also need SAGeo package which can be found here: [https://github.com/ve3nkl/satellite-passes/tree/main/satools]. You won't need the entire satools directory, just copy SAGeo.py from the location above to the same directory where you downloaded wipe.py. The other packages used by the script are most likely already available in your Python 3 installation. You might need to install the geographiclib package which is needed by SAGeo.py.
The only mandatory parameter to run the script is a path to the directory where Winlink emails are located. As an example, my PAT (Winlick client) installation saves the incoming emails in the following directory:
~/.local/share/pat/mailbox/VE3NKL/in
To avoid typing this long path every time I appended the following line to ~/.bash_profile:
export PATINBOX=~/.local/share/pat/mailbox/VE3NKL/in
Now to run the script I can issue the following command in my home directory:
python3 ./wipe.py $PATINBOX
This will result in scanning all emails in the PAT's inbox directory. If a station reported more different locations at different times the last reported location will be taken and the older ones will be ignored. It is useful to set some date/time filtering for the scanning process, i.e. to scan only emails that were sent after certain date/time. This can be used by using either -a or -d parameters:
python3 ./wipe.py -a 2022/06/01 $PATINBOX
or
python3 ./wipe.py -d 2 $PATINBOX
The first example above will only scan emails sent after midnight on June 01, 2022 (UTC) and the second one will scan emails sent no longer than 2*24=48 hours ago.
Another useful parameter is --qth. Is can be used to specify your own location. If it is used, the script will automatically calculate a distance and azimuth information relative to the location you specified. There two formats for this parameter value:
--qth FN03gu
specifies the maidenhead grid square. Either 6 character or 8 character grids are accepted (I recommend to use 8 character ones for better precision). Another form is latitude, longitude as degrees and their fractions. For example:
--qth "43.86,-79.46"
To find out all supported parameters issue:
python3 ./wipe.py --help
One optional parameter is -o that can be used to specify an output file name where waypoints representing the station locations will be written. The format of the file is GPX and it is supported by a variety of GPS/Mapping related software. For instance:
python3 ./wipe.py -o test.gpx -d 2 $PATINBOX
will produce a test.gpx file which could be imported into the Garmin BaseCamp software which will display the stations on any available map. There are also some online products that support GPX format files. One of them is:
Another similar optional parameter, -okml, is used to produce a file containing waypoints in the KML format. File in this format could be imported into Google custom maps. Here is an example of such a map:
