[CQ-Contest] Checking your entry

[Bruce Sawyer]

David A. Pruett wrote:
> 
> One item which has been missed in the discussion of post-contest checking
> of your log concerns making sure all of the default information in your
> entry is correct.  Actually, this is a pre-contest task.
> 
> Well, the log for a certain well-known Carribean contest
> station indicates that he sent "59 CA" for every exchange, whereas in
> compliance with the contest rules we strongly suspect that he sent "59" and
> a serial number.  

...

Wonder who that could have been?  Actually, I figured ARRL would get a
lot of logs with errors like that.  I was using CT, set up for the 10m
contest on the DX side, and set up correctly (within the CT framework)
as best I could tell.  It wasn't until after the contest, when I
generated the ARRL format file, that I saw it was dumping that "599 CA"
into the sent field.  (This obviously came from the default
configuration file, where I have CQP as the default contest.)  I figured
this was an error on CT's part, and nothing I could do about it at that
point.  However, each line does still have the serial number in it, so I
didn't worry too much about it and sent the log in anyway.  I thought I
even attached a note to the submittal to explain this.  Here are 5 lines
from my log to show what I mean:

10  SSB 13/12/98 2353 3683  LU5FB          59  CA    59  982     2  0
10  SSB 13/12/98 2353 3684  LU6DTS         59  CA    59  131     2  0
10  SSB 13/12/98 2354 3685  PY1OL          59  CA    59  3       2  0
10  SSB 13/12/98 2355 3686  LU3HL          59  CA    59  399     0  0
10  SSB 13/12/98 2355 3687  LW1DIP         59  CA    59  223     2  0

The serial number is after the time stamp, instead of being in the field
where it should have been.  Now that I realize how much computer
analysis is going into checking the logs, I realize I should have
written a filter to put those serial numbers over into the correct
field.  Clearly it will cause the log checkers grief to have to access
the serial number where it is.  But I would hope this is not the basis
for log disqualification.  That seems more than a little severe to me.  

73,
Bruce, ZF2NT


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