[CQ-Contest] Status of New MASTER.DTA

[k8cc]

I've been receiving a few e-mails asking about when a new MASTER.DTA file 
will be available.  K9TM and I have been working on this (squeezed in 
between the past few contests) and we're now to the place where we can 
generate .DTA files, so we have something to report.

We has asked the contest community to submit logs from the 2000-2001 
contest season to be included in the database.  The response (in terms of 
the number of logs) received from the contest community was very low.  We 
received a total of only about 140 logs, which is much lower than in the 
past.  K9TM generated a MASTER.DTA last night and its about one third the 
size of last year's MASTER.DTA.  In addition, we received almost no logs 
from domestic contests.  Those of you expecting a useful MASTERSS.DTA for 
SS and other domestic contests are going to be out of luck.

It was surprising who did and did not send logs.  Very few of the big 
multi-multis sent logs.  A few people sent us keys to their on-line logs 
which they said we could download.  We're sorry, but this is November and 
we're in the middle of the contest season so we don't have time for 
this.  (Those of you outside W/VE might not be aware that two of the 
biggest contests for us North Americans, ARRL Sweepstakes CW and SSB, are 
squeezed in between the two CQWW weekends.)

We will issue a new MASTER.DTA this upcoming week.  It will be available on 
the DATOM Engineering web site (NA support site) 
http://www.datomonline.com.  It will also be available on other logging 
program web sites if they've asked for it.

If the contesting community wants a comprehensive MASTER.DTA as AD1C has 
put out in the past, we need logs and we need them right now in order to be 
ready for CQWW CW.  Here are the ground rules:

1. Cabrillo logs are preferred, but we'll also accept CT .BIN and NA .QDF 
files.  Sorry, but we don't have time right now to deal with ADIF, 
WriteLog, LogEQF, or other formats.

2. Do you have any idea how many logs we received last time named 
00CQWWCW?  It took over three hours with the current batch of logs simply 
to rename and organize the 140 logs we received so far .  THIS IS NOT 
VALUE-ADDED WORK FOR YOUR HARRIED MASTER.DTA TEAM!  Please name each file 
with your callsign and a number; ex: K8CC1.LOG, K8CC2.LOG, etc.  The files 
can be zipped into a single zip file for e-mailing.

With regards to file naming, the "golden submitter" awards go to WE9V, 
VR2BG, K8ND and N3RD whose submittals met all of these requirements and 
required no extra work for us.

The logs should be e-mailed to k8cc at mediaone.net.  We'll include all logs 
received up until 11 PM, November 19 (that's 04Z on November 20) but then 
we have to start turning the crank.

Thanks to all who have sent logs already.  Its up to the rest of us to take 
a few moments to send logs if the MASTER.DTA file is going to be up to 
expectations.

73,

Dave Pruett, K8CC
Tim Mitchell, K9TM


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