First of all, thanks to everyone who got on for the 2009 Florida QSO Party
this past weekend. The early feedback is that activity, and thus many
scores, were at record-breaking levels.
As some of you have discovered, the FQP is using a robot to acknowledge
e-mailed logs to logs at floridaqsoparty.org for the first time. Mega-thanks
to Trey, N5KO and George, K5TR for getting this assembled.
What became obvious very quickly is that some logging software produces
Cabrillo files that are not compatible with the current Cabrillo standard.
I've gotten a primer on Cabrillo formatting and will share the highlights:
- All logs coming in so far have a different Contest Name than expected.
No problem.
- At least one popular program contains a header line called CLUB-NAME.
That is not Cabrillo standard, hence the warning message. CLUB is what
Cabrillo expects.
- Until several years ago, CATEGORY was a single field that always expected
4 pieces of information. The newer Cabrillo standard is that these four
pieces are individual lines within the Cabrillo header: CATEGORY-OPERATOR,
CATEGORY-BAND, CATEGORY-POWER and CATEGORY-MODE. In addition, Cabrillo has
fields for CATEGORY-ASSISTED, CATEGORY-TRANSMITTER and CATEGORY-STATION which
don't translate from the original single line CATEGORY.
An sample of a valid CATEGORY was SINGLE-OP ALL LOW CW. The robot
translates that into:
CATEGORY-OPERATOR = SINGLE
CATEGORY-BAND = ALL (not used for the FQP)
CATEGORY-POWER = LOW
CATEGORY-MODE.= CW
Note that the FQP does not have single-band categories.
But if your CATEGORY came in as SINGLE-OP LOW CW, then the robot would
think that CW was your POWER since POWER is the 3rd item on that row, not find
it in the list of valid powers, and default you to HIGH power. Similarly, it
would not find your mode in the 4th postion and would default you to MIXED
mode.
- Now, moving on to the bulk of most submissions - the QSO rows. Cabrillo
expects a row to look like this:
QSO: 14037 CW 2009-04-25 1600 W8MJ 599 MI K8NZ/4 599 LEE
The number of spaces between each field is irrelevant. But a space is a
delimiter. So, if your log shows:
QSO: 14037 CW 2009-04-25 1600 W8MJ 599 WEST VIRGINIA K8NZ/4
599 LEE
then the robot thinks that VIRGINIA is in the received callsign column and
so forth...
Also, those columns need to appear in exact order.
Several of the popular DOS programs produce columns like this:
QSO: 14000 CW 2009-04-25 1648 N6TR 1 OR K2EK 599
599 Sum
or
QSO: 14037 CW 2009-04-25 1600 W8MJ 599 K8NZ/4 599 LEE
In the first case, several columns are misaligned. In the second case, the
sent QTH column is missing.
If your logging program does not produce information in this format, the
robot will send an informative message back to you. However, your log is
still safe and accepted.
More information is available here:
http://www.kkn.net/~trey/cabrillo/tags.html
Over the next few months, we will be working with the various logging
software authors and Trey to ensure that everyone is in sync with what is
expected in the Cabrillo format for the FQP and to give the authors plenty of
time
to issue updated software in time for downloading prior to the 2010 FQP.
In the meantime, thanks for making the 2009 FQP the best yet and for
sending in those logs.
Any questions on the above may be directed to the FQP guru Ron, WD4AHZ
using his call at arrl.net or to me with my call at aol.com
73, Dan, K1TO and Ron, WD4AHZ
**************
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