[RTTY] EA RTTY CONTEST 2002 CHECKING

[ea1mv@retemail.es]

THE EA RTTY CONTEST 2002 CHECKING LIST

(Antonio Alcolado, EA1MV)

The novelty of the EA RTTY CONTEST 2002 has been the employment of the fine package of programs named Cabrillo (of WT4I) for the control of the lists. 332 were received, of which 307 arrived via internet (92%), the rest by mail, some in disket, others in paper.  
  
The first program of the package, the Cabrillo Converter,  has been used to convert to the format Cabrillo the different logs written in ASCII format. Many contesters already sent their lists converted to Cabrillo format by the sound card RTTY softwares, or by log programs, but not all worked correctly with the second program of the Cabrillo Tools, the Log Checker, so it was necessary to reconvert many received logs. Especially the "Cabrillos" processed by the MixW, by MMTTY and some other Japanese softwares could not calculate the punctuation with the Log Checker. On the contrary, the ones processed by the Writelog, the DL4RCK, the OH2GI,  and of course those of WT4I, worked perfectly.  
  
The other part of the work consisted, using of the received logs, to process a reference  "Master" file that contains all the callsigns found at least twice in the group of all the logs. This file serves as pattern to compare all logs.  If a callsign  is in the log of a contester, but it is not in the Master file, it means that contester is the only station  that worked him and no more. They are the called "unique" QSOs that are attributed to errors and they can be excluded from  the listing of valid QSOs.    
Another group of calls that already in this edition of the Contest have been methodically eliminated from the lists as considered erroneous are the "uniques" ones that with a change or substitution of a letter or of the number  would become in valid (they are the ones called "unique plus one"): for example AA5UU instead of AA5AU, or EA3MZZ instead of EA3MZ. They are the calls "not properly copied", or "not correctly heard" that clearly are not valid. The callsigns “unique” and the “unique plus one” appear in the logs in a variable number that depends on the precision and accuracy of the program, or of the sensibility of the used modem, or of the ability of the operator. They are usually between the 0 and 2,5% of the total of the callsigns in the log, but there are stations that have  8 or 9%. For the next edition of the Contest it will be a matter of including in the Rules some concrete normative  to establish the maximum of "unique" acceptable.  
The only exception for the "unique" is constituted by the logs of the DX  or "strange" stations. In fact these stations are called very often by other stations that are not in the contest and they only desire to work the DX station, they pass a 599 001 and then disappear.  

The  Master file of the EA RTTY Contest 2002 contain 1240 indicative that are all those that appear in at least 2 lists.  
  
During the checkup with the "Master file ", the program Log Checker processes for each checked log a file that contains the score calculated by the agreement Cabrillo with the .Rules of the Contest, the listing of the null QSOs, of the erroneous, "uniques", ".uniques plus one",  duplicates qsos with exchange (number or province) erroneous, etc., so that it is possible to modify the punctuation automatically calculated by the program itself. It is sufficient to click on the QSOs that must be eliminated so that the program ignores them and calculate the new punctuation.  
  
The electronic control of all the lists of a competition as ours is very quick, although - as all that is made for via computer science, the program requires a very long and tedious preparation of the logs.. But what is indidables is that it is won in accuracy and in rigor. The errors are hunted without pity, as never it would be done manually: once established some norms, the program is configured for the same ones and this executes them to crack chart.  
  
Why Cabrillo?  The Authors of the program, WT4I and G0/W6AZT, wanted to give to their program the name of a Browser, the one of the Portuguese Joao Rodríguez Cabrilho. This even though was born in Portugal, great part of its life lived in the Spanish colonies of the New World. He took part to some trips of discoveries, he was it Mexico with Narváez, took part to  the discovery of the city of Oaxaca, and in 1542 the Viceroy of the New Spain, Antonio of Mendoza, asked him him to explore the northern limits of the west coast of the New Spain (Mexico). The why of this name? I don't know it, although I imagine it.  

Many thanks to WT4I and to G0/W6AZT his effort and for his fine job..