[TOEC] SAC2000 - Comments

[Jan-Eric Rehn - SM3CER]

Hello,

The SAC2000 Final Results are ready at last!

I'm sorry it has taken so long, but there has been many questions to be answerred by the SAC Contest Committee and a lot of troubles to be solved. Preparing the final results in ASCII format has taken almost a week and it will take at least another week or more before I can present the results in HTML format on the web. I had hoped that the results could have been presented much earlier, but the development of a new log checking program from scratch has also taken long time and there has been lots of versions before the last one used. Anyway, we can hope that we in SM have showed the way and that the logs will be ready much faster in the future, now that all the software is developed.

Also a program to type a paper log to get a Cabrillo file and a program to convert all different kinds of ASCII logs into Cabrillo have been developed. All three programs have been done by Torvald, SM2EZT and I have been the "Alpha" and "Beta" tester. I have started to check the logs several times and then, when I've discovered a bug or had a wish for some changes, I had to start all over again, when SM2EZT had done a new version of the program.

The program to make a Cabrillo file from a paper log (Manual Log Input - 423 kB) is available for download in the SAC Rules on my contest site (with detailed instructions).

I'm also VERY sorry I had to disqualify OH1X and OH2U in the CW part and OH1F, OH1X, OH2U and OH4RH in the SSB part. I hope there will be no hard feelings, because there was nothing else to do in this case! All six stations had a huge amount of wrong sent serial numbers in their logs - between 17-70% of their QSOs! The difference between the sent number and the received number could be between 1-3. (They could send for instance 599123 - the other station received 599123 - then you could read f.i. 599121 in the first log and so on). It was a total of 15.011 QSO:s in those 6 logs and it was at least 7.498 QSO:s with wrong sent serial numbers (50%). All the stations that worked them loosed their points and multipliers for those QSO:s! The logs couldn't even be used as checklogs, as there were so many wrong reports. I have checked their logs very carefully QSO by QSO. I have also very carefully checked ALL the other Multi-Single and Multi-Multi stations QSO by QSO, to see I didn't do anything wrong! Noone of the others had this similar problem.

No particular software can be blamed as I see it. Both CT, TR and some unknown software have been involved. I beleive it must be a network problem.

Maybe this problem has occured in earlier SAC:s, but couldn't be detected with the manual log checking? Now, with the computer checked logs it's impossible to get through with things like this without penalties. One or two stations wrote in their mail that they had problems with the sent numbers, but it doesn't matter - the log checker need a correct log.

What to learn from this?

Everyone preparing a log to send to ANY Contest Committee must be sure to check during and after the contest that the contest messages are correct. You can't send one message during the contest and present another message in the log.

If you want to look at your own checked log, with a UBN report för every QSO, please send an e-mail to: sm3cer@contesting.com and ask for your checked log and I will send it to you. If you want you can even see your log in the Cabrillo format.

I also want to thank my Sub Contest Committe that was of big help in an early stage, with typing all the paper logs into the Manual Log Input program - around 400 logs! 

So - a big hand to the following members of SK3BG in Sundsvall:

SM3AF, Sten - SM3BCS, Eskil - SM3CWE, Owe - SM3EVR, Tord - SM3FJF, Jörgen - SM3GSK, Clas-Olof - SM3LIV, Ulla - SM3UQO, Björn - SM3WSK, Bengt.

...and even a bigger hand to SM2EZT, Torvald - the man behind the software!!!

73 de Jan

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Jan-Eric Rehn - SM3CER - Contest call: 7S3A
SAC 2000 Contest Committee Chairman
E-mail: sm3cer@contesting.com - ICQ: 11074897
SM3CER Contest Service: http://www.sk3bg.se/contest/
SK3BG Web Site: http://www.sk3bg.se/
Mostly QRV in MS or MM from: SK3BG - SK3HQ - SK3IK - SL3ZV
K6U at WRTC-96 / Referee at WRTC-2000
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