Dave &etc,
Great writeup regarding the master.dta file. I was (and am) in
awe at the speed at which NA parses through such a file, even
on relatively slow machines, performing the dupe check for highlighting,
etc. And I always wondered why master.dta was always a mish-mosh
of gobbly-gook in my text viewer -hi.
I recall playing around with a utility that supposedly created .DTA files from
a text file of <cr/lf> delimited callsigns. I remember trying to use it to
put together
a .DTA file for a few state qso parties, using .LST files from previous
logs as
input. I gave up after realizing that I'd have to strip out all duplicate
callsigns, and
(preferrably) put them in alphabetical order. My "to do" list still
includes a note
to self promising to write a little utility to perform such a function on a
text file.
All this just using my *own* logs. Heaven help the keepers of the
MASTER.DTA -
having to cull through all the logs and converting, removing dupes,
uniques... Jeesh!
But I'm sure you guys will have the power tools for the job.
FYI-
Don't forget, NA has the capability to select different .DTA's by using
CALLDATABASE. Just give the .DTA files different names that you will
recognize (US_VE.DTA, US.DTA, DX_ONLY.DTA, etc), and they will
show up in the list box.
Anyway, I looked all over my hard drives for that little utility, but no fun.
Maybe it's on one of the contest sites somewhere.
Rich, KA8OKH
Somerset, KY
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