As a benefit to NA users, I will now generate updated COUNTRY.DAT files,
based on the same data I use for the CT country files. You can download the
file from the Internet NA-USER reflector or the NA BBS. If someone is
willing to host the data for Anonymous FTP access, please let me know. I
can not do it myself because of our company security firewalls.
Revision information is contained in the file HISTORY.CTY which you can
download as well.
I have only tested this file with NA version 9 - I don't know if it works on
any older versions. If it does not, and you want older versions of NA
supported, send me the original COUNTRY.DAT file, or its equivalent, from
your version of NA and I will write a conversion routine, and make the files
available in the future.
There are several differences between the data in the NA COUNTRY.DAT file,
and the data in the files I produce for CT:
1. Several valid countries in the CQWW contest, notably IG9 (Italian
Africa), JW/b (Bear I) and TA1 (European Turkey) are not included.
They would show up in both the CQ.CTY and DXCC.CTY files, resulting in
three extra multipliers in the ARRL contests. I have asked K8CC for
support in fixing this problem.
2. CT and NA handle KG4 and KC6 callsigns differently. NA requires an
explicit list of valid KG4 and KC6 callsigns, whereas CT does not.
Therefore, I don't have good data on these callsigns. If you know of
valid KG4 and KC6 calls which are not included in the COUNTRY.DAT file,
please send them to me for inclusion in the next version. I have asked
K8CC for a change to fix this problem.
Here are the instructions on how to get the new files:
1. Send a message to NA-USER-REQUEST@eng.pko.dec.com to request the file(s)
you want, i.e.:
GET country.dat
GET history.cty
Remember that file names are in lower case. Multiple file requests on
separate lines are OK. The files are there NOW.
2. Send a message to NA-USER REQUEST@eng.pko.dec.com and get the whole .ZIP
file in UUencoded form. If you don't already have a program to
UUdecode, you will need to get UUD.COM as well:
GET nacty.zip
GET uud.com (optional)
Remove the headers and trailers from the UUD.COM mail message so that
the resulting file begins with "ENC.COM.B&F=" and ends with "z!1", and
save it to UUD.COM. Then remove the headers and trailers from the
NACTY.ZIP mail message so that the resulting file begins with "begin 664
nacty.zip" and ends with "end". Save this to a file called NACTY.UU.
Then on your PC type:
C:\> uud nacty.uu
This should create the NACTY.ZIP file.
3. Download the file NACTY.ZIP from the NA BBS at 412-528-8877.
The file may be called COUNTRY.DAT instead, look for a file
dated 25 April 1995 or later.
If you have any questions, please feel free to send them my way.
73 - Jim Reisert AD1C
reisert@eng.pko.dec.com
--
Submissions: na-user@eng.pko.dec.com
Administrative requests: na-user-request@eng.pko.dec.com
Problems: reisert@eng.pko.dec.com
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