Michael Keane K1MK wrote:
>MARAC adopted W0QE's list of 2x4 county abbreviations for the County
>Hunters CW Contest because the managers of that contest do have to
>deal with all 3076 counties being in play at once.
>
>Whether such a unique-id is of value in regional QSO parties or on
>weekends when several QSO parties are held is up to the sponsors to decide.
>
>
I get in the state QSO parties primarily for the fun of chasing county
multipliers -- maybe someday leading to a County Hunters certificate.
As soon as I encountered my first "multi-state" QSO Party weekend, I
felt the need for exactly such a system as this 2x4 approach. I believe
this common format is much more than being simply "of value" for the
circumstances Mike suggests in his second paragraph -- I believe it's
*imperative*, and represents a major step on the way to eliminating the
crazy variations and asymmetries in in-state / out-of-state contest
exchanges that have cropped up over the years.
Admittedly, there's a short-term "conversion problem' on voice modes
while we figure out how to best bridge the gap between the spoken county
name and its typed or handwritten 4-character representation in the log
entry process, but I'm confident that software methods for converting
even mis-spelled and mis-typed county names and partial county names to
the right 4 characters in the 2x4 County field are less complex to
implement than many of the *existing* features of today's contest
logging programs.
Bud, W2RU
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