[TRLog] Adding logs to TRMASTER

[Tim Totten, N4GN]

On Mon, 2 Nov 1998, D. R. Evans wrote:

> I'd really like you to think about adding the capability to have the
> hit count incremented by the number of times that the call appears in
> the log.

Funny, I was just thinking the same thing today as I was messing around
with my TRMASTER.DTA.  I would love to see this!

While I'm putting things on the wish list, there are several other
TRMASTER-related utilities I'd like to see in POST:

1) The ability to make a new TRMASTER that is a subset of the original,
except that it has calls only from a certain country (or countries).  When
I do SS, I'd like to have only W/VE calls in the .DTA file.

2) Kinda the inverse of the above--make a smaller TRMASTER that EXCLUDES
calls from a particular country or countries.  When I do CQ WW from home,
I'd just as soon not have any W calls in my TRMASTER.DTA.  Yes, I'm aware
of the new feature where TR basically ignores them, but speed can be an
issue with a huge TRMASTER file and a slow processor.

3) What would really be nice is some kind of simple line editor that steps
through the file by whatever field you want and allows you to
add/delete/edit data.  I know that's asking a lot.  That might even be a
job for a third party who has nothing better to do than write freeware for
contesters.

My last comment is even less thought-out than the above, but here goes.
My biggest problem with TRMASTER in general is keeping invalid calls out
of it.  There are basically two causes for invalid calls:

a) a bum call was originally put in for some reason (e.g., a busted call
in one of the input logs or files)

b) a call was originally valid, but now is not.  There are several
subcategories for this (SKs, special event calls, prefix changes, etc.)

So what I'm looking for is an innovative way of reducing these invalid
calls.  The hits threshold is somewhat helpful, but limited.  For example,
it won't help me eliminate calls which used to be very active, but are now
invalid (G3FXB, W6UQF, any of the VS6 folks, etc.).  I have dozens of hits
for many of these calls.

I could take a fairly fresh list like AD1C's MASTER.DTA file, import that
a dozen times to TRMASTER.DTA, then eliminate everything with less than a
dozen hits.  But that has many obvious drawbacks.  For now, I manually
edit TRMASTER.ASC and try to remove invalid calls.  But that obviously
doesn't work very well either.

The only soln I can think of is to add a "date of last hit" field.  I know
this adds to the size of the file, but it could be fairly course.  If you
use month increments, an 8-bit field could cover 256 months--more than 21
years (yes, I realize this is just the kind of myopic programming
responsible for Y2K).  Then the user could choose to eliminate all calls
which have a "date of last hit" more than x months old.  That's the most
effective way I can think of, but I'm no software guy.

How does everyone else handle this now?

73,

Tim Totten, n4gn@iglou.com
http://www.iglou.com/n4gn/


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