Mike,
I am not suggesting any sort of filtering! The spots still appear.
I am only suggesting that if the spot is outside of the operator's bands,
and doesn't have a QSX frequency that is inside the bands, then highlight
the SPOT as a warning to the operator. WL already highlights spots (as
different colors) for worked, not-worked, and multiplier. I am suggesting
another highlight, a gray border, for out of band.
The operator can still select the spot, and determine if the station is
advertising a QSX frequency. When he works the station he can re-spot the
station with the correct QSX info (as I frequently do in S&P mode).
Beyond that, I would like WL to warn me that I have tuned beyond the band,
or that I don't have the dual-vfo buttons set correctly.
It would be cool to color-code the Band-Map with two back ground colors, one
for inband (black as it is now) on one for out-of-band (I would suggest
gray). Obviously, if you looked at a spot in the "gray" part of the band
map you would be suspicious -- but if the spot has a black border around it,
then you know that it has a valid QSX frequency associated with it!
Conversely, if it is gray then you know to be very careful. Interestingly,
if you see a spot in the black part of the band-map with a gray border, then
you know that it has an invalid QSX frequency associated with it (it
happens!) and again you know to be careful!
By the way, I certainly agree that you don't want to filter!
..Eugene..
AE2F
-----Original Message-----
From: Laurence 'Mike' Hammer [mailto:ldh3@cornell.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, November 07, 2000 11:13 AM
To: Skopal, Eugene
Cc: writelog@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [WriteLog] Writelog "out-of-band" enhancement
Filtering for out of band spots is a very interesting problem from a
programmer's perspective. 'Interesting' here means it will generate lots
of user feedback, both good and bad!
From the programmer's perspective, what becomes critical is the data
coming in to filter. Most spotting programs, data entry forms on WWW and
so forth either don't force-fill QSX when appropriate (radio not connected
to computer, program not reading QSX freq when creating spot) or don't show
how to enter a QSX freq when taking manual spots. So the data coming into
WL over packet isn't 100% reliable by any stretch. As a result, WL or any
program that would filter spots would have to make a whole lot of
assumptions that would result in some valid spots being filtered out.
As one of the mult-chasers for W6XR and a few other efforts I'd rather
decide for myself whether a spot is a good one or not. I think that is
part of the operator-skill portion of a contest. I'm generally against
fully automated contests, think the tools we have right now leave just
enough to the operator for SSB contests at least. What I'd like to see is
some more monitoring and some kind of points reduction for folks caught
transmitting out of band, etc. Then we would all remember to check for
QSX! As a fairly new ham but old participant in other forms of competition
I'm amazed at how little enforcement there is in radio contesting.
Mike N2VR
At 09:48 AM 11/7/00 -0500, Skopal, Eugene wrote:
>Wayne,
>
>I, like others, keep getting burned by out-of-band spots. I would really
>like the PC to warn me that I am configured to transmit out of band. It
>would be GREAT if Writelog had a feature that would turn the frequency box
>next to the entry window RED if you were setup to transmit outside of the
>band.
>
>Additionally, it would be great of the out-of-band spots were color coded
>(or bordered/boxed in) differently in the band-map.
>
>..Eugene..
>AE2F
>
>--
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>Submissions: writelog@contesting.com
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