I believe this has come up before, but my memory is not
that swift. My question has to do with logging rovers. First,
let me describe how I log them.
I'll use the Michigan QSO Party as an example. Let's say I log
K8CC the first time. Not knowing for sure that he is roving, I
simply log him as K8CC, and log MACK as the county.
Later, I run into him again, and notice he's giving EMME as the
county. I need EMME, so I type K8CC/EMME in the call field,
and type EMME as the county. But when I hit enter, NA reports that I
need to enter a valid call. I change the call to K8CC/EMM, and
NA accepts it. No Problem.
Next I run into K8XXX in MONR. Somehow forgetting that NA
doesn't seem to accept the <callsign/xxxx> scheme, I log him as
K8XXX/MONR. I hit enter, and NA takes it! Hmmm.
Why does NA take the 4 letter extension with some calls, and
with others it only likes 3 letters after the "/"? I noticed during the
contest that with rovers with 1 by 3 calls, NA accepted the 4 letter
abbreviations after the "/", while 1 by 2 calls only took 3 letters.
This wasn't any big deal until I worked K8CC in OSCE. There were
2 counties that could be abbreviated OSC, so I ended up typing something
cryptic like K8CC/OSC1, and it accepted that, I assume because it was a
number, not a letter? Of course in the qth field, it showed OSCE for the
county.
I was using ver. 10.47, BTW, Had "qth match for dupe" enabled in the
options panel (but that shouldn't have had any effect on the call field,
right?).
I have noticed this anomaly several times in the past few years
using different versions.
Let me emphasize that this is not a big problem for me, but I was just
curious as to why it was occuring, and more importantly, if there
was something I was doing wrong, or could do differently. Ideally,
I like to look at the call with the 4 letter county designation after the
slant. A quick glance at the auto-partial check window shows all the
counties that that call was worked in, without resorting to the "qso's
with callsign" SH-F9 screen. Not to mention that the 4 letter county
designation pretty much removes the chance of running into the
aforementioned "Osceola, Oscola" predicament.
And allow me to apologize if this has been discussed before. Or, if
there is something in the docs that covers it, or perhaps a tech note, I
would appreciate a shove in the right direction.
By the way, MIQP was a blast. Thanks to K8CC and the other rovers
for a great effort. See you all in the Florida and Ontario qso parties
this weekend.
tu de Rich, KA8OKH
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