This next Saturday is the NAQP RTTY contest. I've been working most of the
day to prepare a prefill exchange file for this one, but it ain't been easy.
Main problem is the lack of available historical data for the RTTY event. I
have previously created a combination history prefill exchange file for the
NAQP CW and SSB contests based on contest history files at the Arizona
Outlaws website. However, they don't offer a history file for the RTTY
event.
I've discovered that I can get the RTTY results history at ncjweb.com, but
these are not data files, just score listings from the magazine results
articles. With a lot of copy and pasting I was able to get three years
worth of RTTY contest history into an Excel spreadsheet. Once there I again
had to do a lot of manipulation to make a workable prefill file from the
hodgepodge of data input. After eliminating dupes I was left with only
1,323 records of various call signs over the 2011 - 2013 time frame. This
didn't seem likely to produce a lot of hits so I decided to append this data
to my previous NAQP CW and SSB prefill file. That file contains 3,832
calls. When appended together the file grew to 5,155 calls, but eliminating
dupes reduced that to 4,456.
So the new NAQP history file is now a conglomeration of CW, RTTY and SSB
contests. There is one small problem regarding the data obtained from the
NCJ web site. Their contest results articles only contain the CALL and the
QTH, but not the NAME. So in the large data file most, but not all, calls
will have a NAME and a QTH. Some calls will only have the QTH info and you
will have to enter the NAME from the exchange over the air. If you see one
of these without a NAME pop up you will know if came from the NCJ web data.
One final point. The file contains 4,456 records, but WL only loads 4,449
of them. Apparently there a 7 records that have some defect WL doesn't like
so it rejects them. Unfortunately I have no clue as to which records these
are or what the problem with them may be. I figure this is a very minor
problem and not worth the effort it would take for me to figure out the
issue.
The link to download this file is here.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jb372f8odbzn2qe/NAQP%20CW-RTTY-SSB%20History%20File.adi
A PDF helper file with instructions on how to configure WL to use a prefill
file is here.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mckz6zbuklff0up/WriteLog%20Prefill%20Exchange%20file%20loading%20instructions.pdf
73,
Gary AL9A
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