In the early 80s I bought a Heathkit H8 computer. One of the things I wanted
to use it for was amateur radio logging, contest duping, etc. I wanted to
take the drudgery out of these tasks. There was nothing worse than going
to the Caribbean with a group to work a contest and coming back stuck with the
job of duping a 5000 QSO log.
Well I created my own logging program. The logs are ascii files. Every line
is a log entry. The first two characters are the year. The next two the
calendar month, then day etc.
Since then I have changed computers several times and will likely do it again.
Each time I changed computers I wrote new programs in BASIC to support my logs.
I have changed the format of my logs a couple of times. When I did I wrote a
program to convert all my previous logs.
I use CT for contesting for several reasons. One is I can't write a program
that does what CT does. The other is when the contest is over I can write
a RES file. This is another ASCII file with one log entry on each line.
The data is not formatted in the same way mine is but it is very obvious where
everything is. I have written a program to convert RES format to my format.
It works. I have the logs converted in about 5 minutes and I am ready
to print QSLs on my laser printer.
I print the whole card on stock that is pretty cheap. I have printed thousands
of QSLs in the past few years. I use databases to access addresses for
envelopes and print them as well.
I could not use CT with out the ability to print RES files.
I would NEVER EVER use any logging program that I did not understand the
format of the log files and have the means to read and modify them.
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