Some other contest loggers have the facility that Chris, G3SJJ, has asked
for. They will display a station's name when his call is typed in the Call
window. They also use special characters in the CW exchange to allow you to
send the name as part of the exchange.
So, in SD, for example, you can LOAD a list of names, then put the
characters #N in your CW exchange. When the program encounters this, it
takes "Chris" (or whatever) from the loaded file, and sends it in your
exchange ("G3SJJ Chris 5NN 14", perhaps).
I've asked K8CC to implement this, and he replied "Sorry, I see this as
fluff." Fair enough, although it would be a benefit in other situations as
well.
You can "cheat" by making a special version of the MASTER.DTA file. Take
all the callsigns whose names you want to be reminded of, and add the name
on to the end of each one. So you make an ASCII file (MASTER.ASC) along
these lines:
.......
G3SJJCHRIS
GW4BLESTEV
K8CCDAVE
.......
etc.
NA is quite fussy about the format of DTA files -- must be in alphabetical
order, and limit of ten characters, so some names will be abbreviated.
Create your MASTER.DTA, and give it the name NAMEFILE.DTA. Then load into
NA with CALLDATABASE. If you have AUTOCHECK set, NA will display the call
and name in the PARTIAL CALL window. It's not ideal, but is useful to
remind you of someone's name when you've been operating for 30 hours and
can't even remember your own name .......
73,
Ed, G3SQX (aka N0ED)
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