[SD-User] RAC Contest Problem

[Paul O'Kane]

Thanks to all who reported this problem.

John G4RCG, and others, described the following.

> I wanted to edit a call that I had put in and as soon
> as I went past a canadian stn with a province, say ON
> the next non candadian stn be it EU or US then SD would
> not let it go past without a State being put

Firtly, SD offers 2 separate ways of editing any earlier QSO.  As described
under "Editing Logged QSOs" in the Command Summary - "Use Up/Down (scroll)
keys or enter QSO number".

In the circumstances described, the Up/Down keys did not work, but I've
checked that entering the QSO number does work.

At this stage, the best option is to note the qso numbers (the Serial Sent)
for all QSOs you know you have to edit.  Reload SD, enter each QSO number
and edit the QSO.  SD will re-score, and check dupes and multipliers after
each edit.  Alternatively, you could use the edit option in SDCHECK (Option
1) to make any necesary corrections - this option is not so good, becasue no
re-scoring or dupe checking takes place. I know some of you use EDIT or
NOTEPAD, but it's safer to edit with SDCHECK because it won't let you change
the length of any of your QSO records.  In either case, you can then re-load
SD and see your score, or generate your Summary Sheet file with SDCHECK.

I've now corrected the problem in SD, and the fix will be included in V9.84
for release on 1st January.

Here's the explanation of what happened, for those of you who are
interested.  When editing a QSO in a Type 10 contest, SD tests the callsign
(by reference to the .CTY file) to see if it's an Area QSO or not - because
Area QSOs must have a valid area code, and other QSOs should not have an
area code.  The .MLT file (in this case CANADA.MLT) lists country prefixes
(in the .CTY file) which will require an area code (in this case VE only).

Now what's different about the RAC contest, or in the way that SD is setup
to score it, is that the .CTY file, CANADA.CTY, has only 1 country record
(VE itself) as there are no country multipliers.  SD did not find a matching
country for any non-Canadian callsigns, and
it did nothing - whereas it should have defined the QSO as a non-Area QSO.
When you scroll past a Canadian callsign an internal AREAQSO indicator is
set, but it was not unset for the next non-Canadian callsign (because of no
matching country in the .CTY file), so SD insisted on getting an area code
before moving on.

Again, this bug in SD is/was probably unique to the RAC contest. In any
case, it's another loophole closed for good.

73,
Paul EI5DI