Problems with CT and IARU

[Peter Hardie]

On Tue, 3 Aug 1993, Jeff Tucker F/N9HZQ wrote:

> Hello, everyone.  I used CT to log my effort in the IARU contest.
> CT is scoring some contacts as being in the wrong continent. 
> Specifically, CT3 gets logged as EU.  EA8 gets logged as EU, but EA gets
> logged as AS!  Since I'm in  France, this changes the points total.
> 
> Can anyone suggest a remedy, besides hand-changing my logs? 
> Is there a specific format for this field [in CT]?  I tried putting in a
> few EU and AS as appropriate, but it didn't seem to help.
> 

Some time ago I asked if some contesters with large logs ( > 1000 QSOs)could
send them to me so that I could use them to make sure that the logging
program which I wrote for my Amiga was scoring the IARU contest correctly.
I only received two logs (thanks guys, you know who you are). One was
done with CT and the other with NA. I found a couple of bugs in my program
with these logs but it also showed up problems in both NA and CT.

The problem that Jeff describes is also true for some zones that will
affect North American ops. The fix that Jeff tried should have solved the
problem i.e. in CT, you add the continent on the end of the line. I don't
know why that didn't work for him.

The problems I found in CT were the same type as Jeff found ... problems
with the IARU.CTY file.
CT scores P40 (zone 11) as if it was NA when it should be SA.
It scores 4K2 (presumably Franz Josef Land) as NA when it should be EU.
These two cases helped increase the score of the op who sent me his log.

In the NA program, there appears to be a bug. If you enter a duplicate
contact with an incorrect zone, NA will score the contact as zero QSO
points BUT if the zone is a new multiplier it will count it! Hmmmm. 

NA also had a problem with zones. It put T9 in Asia when it should be EU.
There's also a question about a contact with 4L2. Is this a Georgian in
Asia jumping the gun and using the prefix that will be allocated as of
1994 or is it in European Russia - the current allocation? Both of these
make a difference to EU or AS ops.
 
I'd still like some big logs from you guys if you don't mind. I'm looking
for logs from CQWW, ARRL DX, IARU, FD , WPX, and SS. I would also need
your claimed score to compare it against my program. I may advertise any
discrepancies I find, as I have just done here, but I won't identify whose
log it came from.

73 de Pete hardie at herald.usask.ca  VE5VA