On Mon, Mar 06, 2000 at 03:03:00PM -0500, Jim Reisert AD1C wrote:
>
> At 12:23 PM 3/6/00 -0600, Kenneth E. Harker wrote:
> >In response to Mike N2MG who wrote:
> > > All this "nefarious" stuff aside, I found the fact that a "G3XYZBUSTED"
> > > appeared on the BandMap to be a great eye-opener. Typing BUSTED only into
> > > the comments area is much less useful as it scrolls off the (usually
> > > hidden
> > > or non-existent) packet window WAY too fast to notice.
> >
> >I think it would be much more useful if the person who detected the "busted"
> >callsign spot would instead spot the correct callsign.
>
> Ken, you need to do BOTH.
>
> I originally disliked the busted thing (you can't work HP9ZBUSTED so why
> spot it?) but I have seen the light. I hope more people do this.
>
> If I have HP9Z in my ANNOUNCE window, immediately followed by HP9ZBUSTED,
> then I know not to bother going to the frequency (let's say I have a good
> run going, and don't want to QSY for a mult right away). If I have just
> HP9Z, and I go there (hey, things are slow and I still need Panama), and I
> find 8P9Z there instead, what do I do? Well, HP9Z is still in logging
> program, waiting for me to hit enter. It takes only a minimal amount of
> work to type BUSTED after the call, put out the spot, and return to my run
> frequency. A trivial amount of extra work.
>
> Now let's say instead I just put out the 8P9Z corrected spot (which is a
> little more work than before, because you have to wipe out the old busted
> call or do some magical editing). Everyone still has HP9Z in their
> ANNOUNCE window, and I bet a dozen people go after it. Probably no one
> needed 8P9Z anyway, so that call would NOT be in the announce window, so
> there is NO INDICATION that HP9Z was busted.
>
> Like I said, you need both. It's a great convention and I hope more people
> follow it.
I don't know - this logic seems kind of software-specific to me. (I don't
even know what the ANNOUNCE window is.) I use TR Log, and the way needed
mults show up is that the entry in the band map has a smiley-face beside it.
If another spot comes along within a small frequency epsilon of a spot
already in the band map, the new spot overwrites it.
As an example, this past weekend someone spotted 5B1BON and it showed up as
a needed mult until the corrected spot comes through and it shows up as
FB1BON, already worked. If it happens that the two spots come through one
right after the other, I'm probably working someone, and never even notice
the bad spot. If on the other hand, I see 5B1BONBUSTED in the band map,
it still shows up as a mult, it grabs my attention unnecessarily, _and_
I don't have any information about what the real callsign actually is. Maybe
it's 5B4BON and I really do need it.
In TR Log, if I went to a spot for 5B1BON and heard the station sign FB1BON,
all I have to do is type ESC followed by FB1BON and ` to spot it. That's
only seven keystrokes and a ` compared to adding BUSTED to the end of the
call, which involves six keystrokes and `. In fact, for any call shorter
than a 2x3 format callsign, it's as fast or faster to just type in the
corrected callsign.
For my personal experience, 5B1BONBUSTED gives me a lot less information
with which to make operating decisions that FB1BON does. Of course,
contest software other than TR Log may have different considerations
involved.
--
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Kenneth E. Harker "Vox Clamantis in Deserto" kharker@cs.utexas.edu
University of Texas at Austin Amateur Radio Callsign: KM5FA
Department of the Computer Sciences President, UT Amateur Radio Club
Taylor Hall TAY 2.124 Maintainer of the Linux Laptop Home Page
Austin, TX 78712-1188 USA http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/
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