[CQ-Contest] Origin of Cabrillo

[Trey Garlough]

Don G3XTT has the story right, because he was there. :-)  And now for
the rest of the story...

In the early 1990's there was a thing called the "ARRL Format" for
submitting contest QSO data to the ARRL on floppy disk.  Cabrillo was
an extention to the ARRL Format that added summary sheet info and a
few other things to help automate tabulation of contest results.  At
the time it's name was ARRL Format V2.

In order for ARRL Format V2 to succeed I felt it required unanimous
support from the ARRL, CQ, and the authors of the most popular contest
software.  All parties gave support without hesitation except for CQ
-- the CQ representative said "CQ will give support, but only if you
remove 'ARRL' from the name."  Oof!

Remembering the story G3XTT told me about Maidenhead I started
noticing the names of nearby streets and businesses -- there's a
Cabrillo Highway and a Cabrillo beer shop and so on.  Out of
desperation (and exasperation) I chose the name Cabrillo.

--Trey, N5KO


G3XTT writes:
> As I told Franki, Trey was staying with me on one occasion and he mentioned
> that he had noticed the place name Maidenhead en route to here (it's about
> 10 miles away from where I live). I explained that Maidenhead locators were
> so-named because they were agreed at an IARU conference held in Maidenhead.
> 
> So when Trey developed the logging format he decided to adopt a similar
> approach and name it after a local place name.
> 
> Don G3XTT