[NA-User] Emptying dupe sheet in the middle of test?

[David A. Pruett]

At 11:22 AM 4/5/03 +0300, Juha Rantanen wrote:
>I would like to run ES-Open Championship with my favorite logging software
>NA but there is a small hick up doing so. As it says in the rules the 
>contest last for 4 hours and I'm allowed to run every station once on both 
>bands on every period. That is 8 times all together.  Is it possible to 
>empty the dupe sheet after every hour like TR allowes one to do or do I 
>need 4 logging windows one for each period? If I need 4 NA's open is it 
>possible to have them all setup so that I can use LPT port keying with 
>them. Meaning I don't need to do any configuring between the periods?

I find the description of TR allowing the dupe sheet to be emptied every 
hour very curious.  This would be relatively simply to add to NA, but the 
bigger question is what happens when you re-load the log?  Is there some 
sort of marker in the file which causes the dupe sheet to empty as the file 
is re-loaded?  If not, then the repeat QSOs between periods will be marked 
as dupes when the file is reloaded.

If I understand your description of the rules, it sounds like the contest 
is broken into four one-hour segments.  The only way to do this with NA is 
to create four log files, one for each hour.  Scoring for multipliers will 
have to be done by hand.  Electronic log submittal could be done by piecing 
together the four Cabrillo files.

Another suggestion (since I assume it will be a relatively small log with 
only four hours) would be to add "/1" to every QSO the first hour, "/2" the 
second hour, etc.  In this way you could have one single log file with 
multipliers and scoring which should be correct.  After the contest, take 
the Cabrillo or .PRN file (whichever you're going to submit) and manually 
edit the file to remove the "/#" identifiers.

While not elegant solutions, this should help you operate the 
contest.  Such a rule (allowing repeat QSOs) is not very common, and is 
generally only used to increase activity in contests with low 
participation.  Niche rules like this are not high on my list of NA projects.

73,

Dave/K8CC