[CQ-Contest] What to log?

[David Robbins K1TTT]

> > Therefore, these are all valid callsigns, and the contest software
> > is smart
> > enough to know what country the station is actually in.
> 
> So here's a dumb question -- how does the software know? If the
> portable designation can come before or after the callsign -- how can
> we tell which is which?
> 
> If the (now SK) King of Jordan were to come to connecticut and sign
> JY1/W1 or W1/JY1 -- how could we tell which is which, programmatically?
> 
> This is a puzzle that has perplexed me for years.
>

it is a problem that we in the logging/spotting/analyzing software writing
call 'normalizing' a callsign.  That is separating out the 'normal' call and
the portable or other additions on it.  In 99.9% of the cases it is easy to
do by taking the two parts and calling the longer one the 'normal' call and
the other one the portable designator.  Then it is a matter of figuring out
what the portable or slash part means.  Rarely there are problems where the
portable and normal part are the same length in which case normally one of
them looks like a callsign and the other part ends in a number, or has no
number.  The w1/jy1 would fit the long/short test, but ve1/jy1 wouldn't and
would end up as an unknown to be scored by a human, though with more
advanced rules the software could say that 've1' can't be a complete
callsign, but 'jy1' could be complete and figure it that way.

After separating the parts of the call and figuring out which is the
portable part you have to figure out what it means.  In most cases it is
obviously a prefix in which case you figure out the country from that and go
with it.  In cases like /qrp /berma /as123 or other non-prefix type things
they are ignored when figuring the country.  The real problem right now are
/m and /mm1 /mm2 /mm3 mobile and maritime mobile designations which could
either be just 'mobile' or could be England or Scotland.

Then of course you get the strange ones like  fy/aa1aa/fs, or whatever that
weird one in the carribean is... again, it comes down to a human having to
decide and to code that in as a special case.

David Robbins K1TTT
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