Hello,
Many have remarked that FT activity is like an ongoing 24/7 contest. That's
true, except there's no real contest. This email is a suggestion for one that
some organization might want to establish.
Since grid locs are a normal part of the FT exchange (most of the time), HF as
well as VHF/UHF grid chasing has become an interest in the FT community. Grids
could also be used for another interesting activity: distance scoring. Right
now grid locs are used for distance scoring in the Makrothen RTTY and the Stew
Perry contests and perhaps others that I don't know about.
It might be fun to hold annual events, competitions, if you like, that are
based on the total distances worked by participating stations. Score listings
could be based on something fun like astronomical distances (How many trips to
the moon and back? Can anyone make it to the Sun?).
I don't know an easy way to compute such a score at the moment, but I did an
experiment today. I combined my own AB1J and W1W logs (wsjtx-log.adi) for
this year, doctored it appropriately in the ADIFMaster editor to make it look
like a Makrothen log and then uploaded it into an empty N1MM+ Makrothen contest
data base (however, see Addendum note 2). It loaded into N1MM+ fine and then I
did a rescore and found my distance total is 7,364,460 km.
This isn't exactly correct since the Makrothen scoring gives more points for
40m and 80m, but it gives me an idea of what to expect from distance scoring.
Of course, there's no problem using the Makrothen scoring rules for our
purposes if we wanted to What we need in any case is a distance calculation
app that would be easier to use than my test method above. That app, like the
truth, may be out there somewhere, but I couldn't find it today. If anyone
knows where to get a grid loc distance scoring program, please let me know.
Does this idea have any resonance? Even if not, it might be fun at the end of
the year for interested people to calculate a yearly distance total. I could
send out a similar email at year's end to collect scores to post if anyone is
interested. If done only once a year, my test method might be bearable but
maybe I can come up with a better way in the meantime.
73,Ken, AB1J
Addendum 1: Here are a few lines from my FT ADIF file to show how I changed it
to fake the Makrothen.
- WARC band QSOs were switched to the nearest legacy band so they would be
included in the scoring. 60m went to 40m, 30m to 20m and 17m & 12m to 15m.
I kept the FREQ column for reference, but changed it to X-FREQ so it would be
ignored.- FT8, FT4 (MFSK) and a few JT65 were converted to RTTY. - I didn't
bother to look up missing grid locs for this test. - N1MM+ didn't seem to mind
the non-RST signal report data.
<CALL:5>VA3WU <MODE:4>RTTY <RST_SENT:3>+04 <RST_RCVD:3>+05 <QSO_DATE:8>20210102
<TIME_ON:6>135345 <QSO_DATE_OFF:8>20210102 <TIME_OFF:6>135445 <BAND:3>40m
<X-FREQ:8>5.358006 <STATION_CALLSIGN:4>AB1J <MY_GRIDSQUARE:6>FN42JJ
<CONTEST_ID:14>MAKROTHEN-RTTY <TX_PWR:2>90 <EOR>
<CALL:4>W0GJ <MODE:4>RTTY <RST_SENT:3>-10 <RST_RCVD:3>-07 <QSO_DATE:8>20210102
<TIME_ON:6>135500 <QSO_DATE_OFF:8>20210102 <TIME_OFF:6>135600 <BAND:3>40m
<X-FREQ:8>5.358006 <STATION_CALLSIGN:4>AB1J <MY_GRIDSQUARE:6>FN42JJ
<CONTEST_ID:14>MAKROTHEN-RTTY <TX_PWR:2>90 <GRIDSQUARE:4>EN43 <EOR>
<CALL:6>WA9THI <MODE:4>RTTY <RST_SENT:3>-14 <RST_RCVD:3>+00
<QSO_DATE:8>20210104 <TIME_ON:6>002415 <QSO_DATE_OFF:8>20210104
<TIME_OFF:6>002515 <BAND:3>40m <X-FREQ:8>5.359324 <STATION_CALLSIGN:4>AB1J
<MY_GRIDSQUARE:6>FN42JJ <CONTEST_ID:14>MAKROTHEN-RTTY <TX_PWR:2>90
<GRIDSQUARE:4>EM69 <EOR>
Addendum 2: This is ONLY for those who double log FT QSOs in both N1MM+ and
WSJT-X. I log all my QSOs into N1MM+, any mode, so all FT QSOs go there as
well as into the WSJT-X logs. All FT is double logged. When I tried to upload
my fake Makrothen log, N1MM+ thought I was loading duplicate QSOs. If I had
gone ahead, it would have loaded them in and also deleted them from my normal
N1MM+ date base. I think that's what would have happened, so to be safe I did
the whole operation on another computer where I also have N1MM+ installed.
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