New TAFL Search

[Jay911]

And the raw data has the entries you mentioned with reversed rx and tx.. I cannot say why.

One entry will be the license for the tower site/repeater, which transmits on the "receive" frequency, and receives the "transmit" frequency (as far as scanners are concerned). Then there has to be a license entry for the radios authorized to use that service, which is the reciprocal of the tower site (since radios transmit on the "transmit", etc).

The part I can never understand is why people are continually reinveting the wheel with regards to TAFL searches. Industry Canada has one on its site that works great with the information that's updated constantly, daily. Granted, it doesn't do things like search by postal code, though you CAN search by area around a lat/long, which doesn't take long to come up with these days, with Google Earth et al.

No offense to you and the others that work hard and come up with the programming to do this. It's unfortunate that there's no API that you can link to in order to do the unique searches you guys do (and let Lindsay link to the TAFL from within RR!). Besides the fact that the downloadable text files of the TAFL have truncated data fields, they're only updated once a month - not dynamically.

 

[jfroot]

Well my motivation for redoing the search is I found IC's to be bloated and hard to use. I wanted a simple google like interface to the data. Based on the number of hits and responses I have received, I have a feeling I'm not the only one.

 

[jfroot]

That's very interesting. I am using the regional files. all the do*.zip found on http://spectrum.ic.gc.ca/tafl/tafindxe.html

Do these files not include data that is in the files sorted by frequency range?

--
J

There are 220 raw records that contain that string.

C:\TAFL2008>findtext "fleetcom" tafl??.txt >nul
38 files found.

file: C:\TAFL2008\TAFL23.TXT
<1 match in 12,137 lines>

file: C:\TAFL2008\TAFL24.TXT
<1 match in 13,026 lines>

file: C:\TAFL2008\TAFL25.TXT
<2 matches in 11,771 lines>

file: C:\TAFL2008\TAFL26.TXT
<2 matches in 16,030 lines>

file: C:\TAFL2008\TAFL30.TXT
<107 matches in 23,447 lines>

file: C:\TAFL2008\TAFL31.TXT
<107 matches in 14,089 lines>

<Total: 220 matches in 570,477 lines in 6 files out of 38 files>

 

[slicerwizard]

That's very interesting. I am using the regional files. all the do*.zip found on http://spectrum.ic.gc.ca/tafl/tafindxe.html

Do these files not include data that is in the files sorted by frequency range?

I suspect that they're complete. There are 178 references to "Fleetcom" in do42b.ZIP and that's how many you're missing...

Since you're not stripping duplicate records, your database should have a total of 570,363 records.

 

[blantonl]

Nice work!

 

[jfroot]

A Ha! I found the problem.. I was missing 42b from my database. Had a typo in the fetching routine. There are now way more fleetcom records. Thank you for finding t his for me.

--
J

I suspect that they're complete. There are 178 references to "Fleetcom" in do42b.ZIP and that's how many you're missing...

Since you're not stripping duplicate records, your database should have a total of 570,363 records.

 

[hfxChris]

I never noticed this while searching the TAFL before, although maybe the other TAFL search engines filter these results out, but what's with the results licensed to "DUMMY" with a callsign of "XXXXXX"?

 

[slicerwizard]

If I search for Tim Horton, I get everything that has "Horton" in it: Horton St, Horton Lake, etc.

If I search for "Tim Horton", I get some of the Timmy's (the ones with "Tim Horton"), but none of the "Tim Hortons" or "Tim Horton's" entries.

 

[Saint]

Searches

If I search for Tim Horton, I get everything that has "Horton" in it: Horton St, Horton Lake, etc.

If I search for "Tim Horton", I get some of the Timmy's (the ones with "Tim Horton"), but none of the "Tim Hortons" or "Tim Horton's" entries.

Also when searching for Fort Erie, anything with the word Fort in it comes back instead of Fort Erie.
Steve

 

[jfroot]

I tried to model the search behavior off standard search engines. If you want to return just that phrase put it in quotes in the search box: "Fort Erie"

--
J

Also when searching for Fort Erie, anything with the word Fort in it comes back instead of Fort Erie.
Steve

 

[Saint]

searches

I tried to model the search behavior off standard search engines. If you want to return just that phrase put it in quotes in the search box: "Fort Erie"

--
J

:wink:Thanks jfroot for the reply, I tried doing searches with quotes and it works perfect, thanks again.
Steve

 

[CYUL]

Nicely Done!!

CYUL

I have created an alternate TAFL Search tool at the following address:

http://www.jrmy.net/tafl

This will allow you to search allocated frequencies across Canada. It is still in the beta phase, so let me know if you think it needs any improvement.

Biggest difference to the government version and others is you can put in your postal code and a radius and see all licensed transmitters within that radius. This lets you see whats close to your house for best listening etc.

--
J

 

[slicerwizard]

I tried to model the search behavior off standard search engines.

An interesting approach, but then shouldn't the results be sorted by rank?

If you want to return just that phrase put it in quotes in the search box: "Fort Erie"

But there is no way to know if that will return all of the records. Using the "Tim Horton" example, one would not know that there were "Tim Hortons" and "Tim Horton's" records that were not being reported.

 

[jfroot]

You sure like to nit-pick Slicerwizard..

I will look into your suggestions this weekend and make some changes.

Thank you for the input.

--
J

An interesting approach, but then shouldn't the results be sorted by rank?



But there is no way to know if that will return all of the records. Using the "Tim Horton" example, one would not know that there were "Tim Hortons" and "Tim Horton's" records that were not being reported.

 

[slicerwizard]

You sure like to nit-pick Slicerwizard..

Sorry! I promise not to comment further until after the weekend...

 

[danimac67]

I liked this program. It has a lot of promise. Is there going to be any further updates?