BandAid - a visual "roadmap" of the HF amateur radio bands
==========================================================

Version: 0.6beta	February 24, 2014

Copyright and Licenses
----------------------

This program and all associated data/documentation is
copyright (c) 2013 Chris B. Newton (N6EWT).  BandAid is built upon
the Java-Gnome user interface library and runtime portions of it
are included in this distribution to facilitate binary installation.
See http://java-gnome.sourceforge.net for copyright and licensing details.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE; and
under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3 (GPLv3).
For more details and to obtain a copy of the license,
visit http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html

Description
-----------
BandAid is a desktop application that provides a visualization of the
amateur radio bands.  It's distributed with definitions for the
HF bands, from 160 meters through 6 meters, but is easily extensible
to any part of the radio spectrum.

BandAid is designed to interface directly with W1HKJ & Associates'
Fldigi program (http://www.w1hkj.com) to synchronize with and track
your radio in real-time.  It also interfaces with HamQTH (http://hamqth.com)
to collect and display DX cluster activity in near real-time.

For further information, visit http://bandaid.cbnewt.org

Prerequisites
-------------
BandAid is a java application and therefore requires a java VM to
run.  It has been developed and tested on java 6, but should also 
run on earlier versions.  If a java VM isn't already installed,
consult your package manager to install one.

Installation
------------
This binary distribution has been built on Debian Linux and should be
compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit Linux distributions based upon
Debian (e.g. Ubuntu).  To install, uncompress and extract the
distribution to a convenient location and run the installation script:

	tar xvzf BandAid-<version>.tar.gz
	cd BandAid-<version>
	./install.sh

The script will create a hidden directory in your home directory and
copy data files there.  It will also copy a java-gnome library to
/usr/local/lib, if it doesn't already exist there.

Running BandAid
---------------
The distribution includes a script (run.sh) to simplify invoking the
java VM.  You can run it on the command line or configure a menu item
in your main menu to invoke it.  It expects the application to be
in the same directory, so if you move it elsewhere, move them both.

