Dave G4BUO brongs up an excellent point. He fears that everything will be
left to the computer software and nothing to a person reviewing the logs.
Again I can only speak for the CQ 160 Contests but the real objective of the
canrillo format was to have one standard format so all logs big and small
will be judged the same.
With the present situation this is nearly impossible as there is paper logs
and electronic logs is non cabrillo format. I do not have the resources or
time to key in the paper logs and even convert
the old format (CT, TR, and NA mainly). Owners of these programs owe it to
the contest community to get a later version that produces a cabrillo log or
use one of the converters and please get the summary info right!
As for log checking, the tools give me a list of dupes, bad calls, and
uniques for each contestant and the uniques goes even further to highlight
those that from the data base might be busts rather than uniques. I look at
the logs and try to reconcile the bads calls and possible busts. I assign
penalties not the programs. The biggest boon to me is the NIL (not in log
found). I also
check the Dx logs for correct state and this is an area where Dx stations
lose many points. I also get a report that warns me if the final score
before afjustments is more than 10% from the claimed score. I also look at
unique percentage. Any station with more than 3% uniques are reported and
those with more than 7% uniques are subject to penalty and disqualification.
This may be unique to the 160 meter band but even the best equiped stations
seldom have more than 3% uniques. The term unique was coined bty the
Directors of the CQ 160 Contests and this has been a standard since I
started helping Don in 1986.
The new software along with the cabrillo format is moving us to the point to
where the accuracy of the scores has improved dramatically. However
reporting the final scores only has a marginal improvement in our ability to
report the scores quicker. One or two months is the maximum possible.
73 Dave K4JRB
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