Some questions with opinions sprinkled in (or maybe vice versa).
It seems to be common practice to append /M, /P or /9 (call area) to logged
calls. I'm wondering, what is the value of this? I don't see that these
appendages contain useful information, at least for WIQP. If a station is
mobile, he needs to state this as his entry category, so the log checker
will know. Or, if he roves multiple counties, this will show in his sent
exchanges, so the checker will know. For stations working the mobile, all
they need to do is log the correct callsign and county. It doesn't matter
if the station worked is mobile or not - it doesn't affect category or
scoring. Am I missing something here?
The need to append /CTY (county) to the received callsign would seem to
depend on a contester's logging program. If the logging program won't allow
the same callsign with different counties, then appending the county name to
the call is a good work-around for logging roving stations. But if the
program *can* handle callsign-plus-county as a unique entity (I think most
current ones do) then why would contesters need to bother with it? This
basically asks for the county to be entered twice.
In addition, callsigns with appended information are a pain for log checking
because they complicate duping and crosschecking. My thought is to move
toward eliminating callsign appendages where possible. Log check software
that reads the log files can/should strip them off unless they contain
information that can't be found elsewhere. Does this make sense?
Do some Parties have rules that change this picture? Comments?
Tom Macon, K9BTQ
www.warac.org
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