Unlike my immediately preceding post, this one is actually about the topic
in the subject line.
The Cabrillo format for the March BARTG contest is indeed unique, and you
will probably need software that supports it.
However, for the January BARTG Sprint, the format is the same as the
"standard" Cabrillo format except that the RST columns are left blank. It
should therefore be easy to produce a valid BARTG Sprint Cabrillo file from
any contest program, whether it supports this contest or not. My suggestion
for how to do this follows:
1. Set your software up for CQ-WPX-RTTY (or any other contest with RST &
serial number in the exchange).
2. Edit your exchange message keys to remove the 599 so you don't get
criticized for sending it.
2A. As an alternative to the above two steps, you may be able to set your
program up for the BARTG Sprint and then when it comes time to create a
Cabrillo file, just lie to the program and tell it you are producing a
Cabrillo file for CQ-WPX-RTTY. Whether you can do this and how to do it
depends on the software, so this alternative may not work for everyone. It
depends on whether you can select the Cabrillo format independently of the
contest. You can in the software I use, but not all software is equally
flexible.
3. After the contest, produce a regular Cabrillo file. It will probably
contain an RST of 599 in all of the sent and received exchanges even though
you didn't send or receive any.
4. Start up the WordPad program (or any other half-decent text editor - just
don't use Notepad, because it doesn't have the capability you need) and open
up the Cabrillo file (you will probably need to tell WordPad to look for all
files, not just .txt or .doc files).
5. In the line that starts CONTEST:, change the contest name to BARTG-SPRINT
.
6. If there is any chance that you sent or received a serial number of 599,
you need to protect those serial numbers from being deleted in the next
step. Assuming that all such cases will look like either "599<space>599" or
"599<space><space>599" in your Cabrillo file (you can scan down the file in
WordPad to check this), you can just do a couple of global replaces (that's
Edit -> Replace -> Replace All in WordPad), from "599<space>599<space>" to
"599<space>0599" and from "599<space><space>599" to "599<space>0599"
(<space> means exactly one press of the space bar, no more, no less). This
should put a leading zero on every 599 serial number without changing any of
the RSTs and without changing any of the column spacing. That will protect
these serial numbers from the next step.
7. Now do a global replace from "<space>599<space>" to
"<space><space><space><space><space>" (that's 5 consecutive spaces). This is
the key step that will remove all the RSTs without changing any of the
column spacing.
8. Save the resulting file. Use a different file name in case of trouble. If
you are worried about the 0599 serial numbers, you can edit the leading zero
back to a space, but I would be very surprised if the contest checkers care
about leading zeros.
Grand total time: about 5 minutes (less if you're used to WordPad, more if
this is your first try at this). In my perhaps jaundiced view, anyone who is
able to figure out how to get a RTTY contesting program interfaced with a
radio, sound card and/or TU and then use the software in a contest should be
able to do this. To me it seems a lot simpler than actually operating the
contest. However, I have teenagers, so I am used to getting disagreement no
matter how obvious something seems to me ;)
My 2c (or 2p) worth. No warranties supplied in case of failure, but if you
keep the original Cabrillo file, you can look at it to see what went wrong
and whatever is needed, it surely can't be much more complicated than the
above; and if I'm wrong, someone will no doubt let me know.
73,
Rich VE3IAY
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