[TRLog] a "smarter" INITIAL EXCHANGE feature

[Jim Smith]

Don,

TRMaster has separate fields for Section and QTH.  Use the INITIAL
EXCHANGE = statement in your config file to take exchange data
from the field you want.  In this case it would be QTH.  This is
normally taken care of when you select the contest setup to use,
but not in ARRL 10.  In the ARRL 10 contest setup file INITIAL
EXCHANGE is set to FALSE, presumably because dx stations don't
send QTH, they send a serial #.  Even TR, marvellous as it is, is
so far unable to predict what that serial # will be.  So, if you
set INITIAL EXCHANGE = QTH you may find when working a dx station
that you get an entry on the exchange line for his QTH.  If you
just add the serial # TR won't accept it and you have to delete
the QTH part (as I discovered during one frantic moment when I had
several guys calling me and I couldn't log the last Q).  Anyway, I
set INITIAL EXCHANGE = QTH because it is so helpful and just
deleted QTH info from dx exchanges.

So, the guy from sjv in your .DTA file will have sjv in the
Section field but may have nothing in the QTH field.  If so,
nothing will show up on the exchange line on the screen if the
Initial Exchange is set to QTH.  The way to get this stuff in
there is to update your .dta file after every contest.  So, if you
worked the sjv guy in ARRL 10 and you update the .dta file using
your ARRL 10 log, now he will have sjv in the Section field and ca
in the QTH field.

For more info on the INITIAL EXCHANGE command see Appendix A in
the manual.

I too had a brilliant idea for additions to the .dom files which
turned out to be completely unnecessary.  Also, if the .dom file
gets updated, any changes you made are lost which is another
reason for not messing with them.  However, your idea would
provide smoother operation than what I am proposing.  I presume
you added sjv to the Ca line in the .dom file and set INITIAL
EXCHANGE = SECTION.  If that isn't what you did I would be
interested in knowing what you did do.

Your .dom file proposal gave me an idea.  As I recall, in the
process of updating the .dta file, a text file is created first
and the .dta file is generated from that.  It wouldn't be hard to
write a little program to scan the text file records for a Section
entry, look up the correct province/state, and create a new QTH
entry for that record.  I'll add this to my To Do list and, if no
one else does it first, I'll try it.  Don't hold your breath,
though.  I got an idea last August for simulating SO2R with TR and
MkV which I call SO1.5R.  It has gone through many versions and is
now almost ready for release!

Hope this helps and thanks for the Q.

73 de Jim Smith	VE7FO

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