The purpose of this page is to summarise updates on the UKBOTA BunkerBase Development WhatsApp Group. To join in with the discussion and influence the project please join the group. If you don’t have the link to the group please ask in the UKBOTA General chat group.
All QSO data used on this site is sample data (as at 20 June 2024)
BUNKERBASE 2.00 BLOG
Table of Contents
The design team
M0ICR (Carl) – Concept, dashboard and data model.
M1SDH (Steven) – Scoring, data model, cluster integration, features.
M0TRT (Ian) – Mapping
Timeline
11th July 2025
BB2 Homepage - Work in Progress
We now have a BB2 Homepage and 3 dashboards (all are incomplete and work in progress).
BB2 Homepage: www.ukbota.net/bb2home
This is a landing page for BB2 and contains guidelines and an explanation of the structure and navigation buttons. About 90% complete.
BB2 Bunker Dashboard: www.ukbota.net/bunk2 – colour scheme orange
This page will not require login and is based on the full UK list and the ‘planning map’ showing all bunkers and scheme ATNO . This page is not personalised to the user. The map is not the correct map, the one I have inserted is just illustrative.
BB2 Activator Dashboard: www.ukbota.net/act2 – colour scheme blue
* This page will require login and is based creating activator records.
* the form is working correctly and is posting to the test database.
* The autofill feature has not been finished yet.
* The table is not filtering for the logged in user.
* Not all buttons links are working.
* Other cosmetic improvement needed.
BB2 Hunter Dashboard: www.ukbota.net/hunt2 – colour scheme green
* This page will require login and is based creating hunter records.
* the form is working correctly and is posting to the test database.
* The bulk upload feature has not been finished yet.
10th July 2025
Third look at the new Activation Entry form and Dashboard
After lots of trial and a lot of error I’ve decided to go for a simple format for the form – this also makes for a clear dashboard that is properly responsive to all screen sizes whilst minimizing wasted screen space and ensuring that both the form and import button are available on a smartphone without scrolling.
9th July 2025
Second look at the new Activation Entry form
Activator entry form layout and responsiveness to screen width now fixed. Field stacking and grouping now occurs on smaller tablets and on mobile screens.
Desktop:
Small tablet (and phone in landscape orientation):
Phone in portrait orientation:
Colour picker added to Activator and hunter forms, see icon top right and colour slider
8th July 2025
First look at the new Activation Entry form
Here is a first look at the activator’s entry form.
Size and font are the same as the equivalent hunter entry form. The activator is a light brown colour, rather that the mint green colour of the hunter form.
The next step will be:
(1) Ensure the form correctly posts to the activations database table.
(2) Design the ADIF upload autofill feature (which will be optional)
Migration of bunkerbase accounts to the test area
Delayed for a day or two whilst we do some further testing.
7th July 2025
Replicating bunkerbase.org user accounts to ukbota.net
Just a quick notice regarding our development site www.ukbota.net, this evening we will be importing all the current bunkerbase usernames and Id’s across so logging in will be using the same username and password you presently use on bunkerbase.
* This will have no impact on our live bunkerbase at bunkerbase.org
* We will continue to use sample data (ie. a cut of bunkerbase at 20 June plus any additional entries we have added (or may have deleted) whilst testing. No changes to data on www.ukbota.net will change your live data on bunkerbase (BB1).
* When we migrate from BB1 at the beginning of September we will take the very latest cut of the data in there and that will be the baseline for BB2 launch, not the test data we are playing with on ukbota.net
* The key advantage of applying the correct user profiles to ukbota.net is that you will be able to log on and access your test data.
6th July 2025
A busy day for the BB2 Dev Team: Steven, Ian and Carl.
WWBOTA Cluster to BB2 Hunter Log entry
Steven has been demonstrating a fantastic new feature for BB2 where by UKBOTA entries in the WWBOTA cluster are shown on the BB2 Hunter Dashboard with an autofill icon. Using this icon, in a similar way to how things work in SOTA with SOTAWatch, clicking on the spot auto-fills the QSO entry form ready for checking before being submitted. This is a significant new feature of BB2!
Notes: Observe how it auto completes the data leaving M1SDH to only need to complete the signal reports, have a quick check and then hit submit. Also not how it extracts all 3 bunkers and puts them in Ref 1, Ref 2 and Ref 3, and for good measure puts the park in the info field. The top row of the QSO entry form is automatically filled from system settings (all of which can be overtyped) but the system already knows the default callsign (from the log in) and the system date and current time (in GMT/UTC).
Bulk upload of ADIF files
Carl has made good progress on parsing ADIF logs for bulk uploading. This is currently configured to suit hunter (and B2B) uploads but the same code can be the basis to also parse activator logs for the auto-completion of Activator activation form on the Activator Dashboard. The ability to bulk upload ADIF files has been a requested feature for some time!
Syntax is important B/G-0123 is a valid bunker, BG0123 B/G0123 and BG-0123 are not! I will be adding a more robust validation logic at some point!
A working demo of the feature (along with compatibility notes) is at: www.ukbota.net/BB2LogParser
Key to this parser working is bunkers information being in the correct ADIF fields (sig_info and my_sig_info), some software (like Ham2K PoLo) put the information in the correct place, others by default do not!
Notes:
* The above example is actually extracting B2B from GB0TA ADIF log. A couple of things to note:
* It has picked up that GB0TA was activating from B/GM-0156 (my_sig_info) in his Ham2K log file.
* The QSO listed are UK B2B QSO for GB0TA (it has not included any of his B2B QSO where the other bunker was not a UKBOTA bunker.
* At 18:43 M1AOB/M was at 3 bunkers B/G-1590,B/G-1225 and B/G-1225. For BB2 these are considered 3 different QSO so are listed as 3 rows (on the above table it row 2, 3 and 4). If GB0TA has also been at a 3fer then this would represent 3×3 B2B QSO and 9 rows would have been shown.
BB2 Mapping Enhancments
Ian has made some great progress with BB2 Mapping. Were not ready to share an interactive demo yet but the images below show a few changes:
1. Red stars for ATNO are now shown as red pins consistent with the blue pins for activated bunkers.
2. All pins are labelled with Reference numbers.
3. The multiple pins showing where a bunker has been activated multiple times has been replaced with a list which makes things much less cluttered on screen!
5th July 2025
A second look at the Hunter QSO Entry form
Useful feedback during an unscheduled demo/test of the forum working live. Key findings
✅ UI is getting there. Form is clear and easy to understand.
⚠️ Need look at making entry validation more robust for some fields, eg. date and time.
⚠️ Need to look at flexibox and field placement – at some screen resolutions fields are leaking over container borders.
⚠️ Need to migrate use credentials across from BunkerBase 1.0 ‘sooner rather than later’ to enable better testing in context.
This Blog added to site top menu
… to enable easier navigation of updates and demos.
4th July 2025
BB2 - System Overview 1.00
Good morning everyone,
The diagram below represents a system overview of BunkerBase 2. The basic concept is not greatly dissimilar to current BunkerBase (BB1) in that the Activator and Hunter logs remain separate (ie. Hunter credit for a QSO does not depend on Activator Logs). The looks and feel should be similar enough to the current BunkerBase that navigation should feel intuitive. Like the current BunkerBase, BB2 is built around 3 main screen – the Activator’s Dashboard, the Hunter’s Dashboard and the Bunker Dashboard. Full logs are now separated from the Activator’s and Hunter’s Dashboard front screen but are only a mouse click or screen tap away – this allows the dashboards to work quicker, and make it easier to view and manage your full logs. Maps and Stats is an entirely new feature and will give a data rich view of both your Activator and Hunter logs. This new feature will give much more information that previously available (including rich and visually attractive mapping) in real-time, due to reworking of the data model allowing us to get at data analysis in a way not possible with the BunkerBase 1 model. Any questions, please ask. You may see this diagram repeated (and perhaps refined) a few times on his journey as it helps provide a good visualisation of what we are trying to achieve!
Hunter QSO Entry - first look at the form
Drilling into the Hunter Dashboard a little …
The BB2 Hunter QSO entry form is now live (ie. not a graphical mock-up) and in testing on the BB2 Hunter’s Dashboard on our development domain. I’m still fiddling with the date and time pickers — I’m not quite happy with how they work just yet. You’ll see a little red star next to any fields that need to be filled in. The top row (callsign, date, and time) will automatically fill in with your details — your callsign, today’s date, and the current time. Of course, you can still change them manually if needed, but this should speed things up if you’re logging QSOs in real time. Band and Mode are selected from drop-downs, just like the B/G… field (which I’m thinking of renaming to something like ‘prefix’ to make things clearer). On mobile, the form is fully responsive — it detects smaller screens and stacks everything nicely, so it’s still easy to use on the go. The big win here compared to BB1 is that BB2 now supports multiple bunker activations in a single submission — so if you’re doing a 2fer, 3fer, etc., you can enter them all at once. The system will log each one separately in your hunter table. This has been a much-requested feature, and it’s finally here! I’ll be asking for ‘guinea pigs’ to test the dashboard on the test domain, in the coming weeks. The Activator Dashboard will be next, once we have the Hunter Dashboard working exactly how we want it (the Hunter Dashboard is a little more difficult to code and script for, which is why we are doing that first.
A first look at BB2 Mapping
For those interested in seeing a demonstration of our new mapping, here is a page for you to look at.
Do read the text next to the map before you jump in, most importantly note that this is NOT the live dataset, it’s taken from a cut of the current database we made from the BunkerBase data a few weeks ago so that we had a big sample of test data to play with without interfering with anything live on the current system – nevertheless it’s still quite a useful map and should work very fast.
The intention is to add a few more features to this map (and similar maps) – we just haven’t had the time yet! I am not sure I like the red stars, and I would like to add perma-labels to the icons, and the search can be a bit fickle at times! – it’s just all about time and where we focus the priorities 🙂 https://ukbota.net/bb2activatorall/
Plans for early September - BB1 to go offline
Sometime in early September there will be no BunkerBase available for about a week. We will give you plenty of notice so you can think about an alternative means to log and store anything you want to put onto BB2 when it goes live. Of course any data you entered in the old BB will be transferred across – up to the point it was ‘switched off’.
1st July 2025
BunkerBase update - why, what, how and when
Hi everyone,
I wanted to share some important news and updates about BunkerBase.
What’s happening with BunkerBase?
BunkerBase will reach its End of Life in September 2025.
This is due to a few reasons: our developer has moved on from UKBOTA, we need to switch to a new internet host (and BunkerBase can’t be migrated as it is), plus there are some design limitations in the current system.
If that sounds a bit worrying—don’t worry, we’ve got good news too!
What’s coming next?
We’re developing a brand-new replacement: BunkerBase 2.0 (BB2). It’s on track to be ready before the current BunkerBase is retired.
BB2 will keep all the core features and workflow you’re used to but with improvements and a fresh design. It will fix many of the issues in the current system thanks to a new database and updated tech.
All your existing BunkerBase data will transfer over to BB2 seamlessly. For now, please keep using the current BunkerBase until we announce otherwise. We expect to freeze new data entry in the old system at the end of August (right after the Airfield Bunkers 2025 event).
Additional good news:
Starting early September, all UKBOTA web services—including BB2 and our other webpages—will be hosted on a single, unified website.
Looking further ahead: The ODIN Project
Some of you may have heard about an exciting initiative to create a universal WWBOTA QSO database—think of it as a global version of BunkerBase, currently called ODIN. The UK is actively involved in this project. ODIN is still in the planning stages, with teams from multiple countries discussing features and policies. UKBOTA is part of the decision-making process to ensure the system meets UK needs. No final decisions have been made yet.
To clear up any confusion:
There are no plans to fundamentally change how UKBOTA logging works right now. We will keep you updated as discussions about ODIN continue. For now, BunkerBase remains the UK’s go-to logging system, with BB2 coming soon as its replacement. BB2 might even be a stepping stone toward the future global system, but there’s still lots to do on that front.
A quick reminder about BB2:
It’s built on the same principles as BunkerBase: Hunter logging doesn’t depend on Activator logs being uploaded, and it remains a trust-based system. All in all, this is a really positive time! UKBOTA is shaping its own future, BB2 is progressing well, and whatever happens with ODIN, we’ll have a strong, feature-rich platform tailored for UK users. Thanks for your support—exciting times ahead!
Best wishes
Carl M0ICR
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