[Trlog] Computers at an Expedition

[G0MIC at aol.com]

Thanks to Paul for his summary.
 
May I add a couple of thoughts?
 
I took over the running of our UK SSB Field Day station at relatively short  
notice, a contest I had never done before. I set up the config files with  my 
interpretation of the rules and did not have time to get it checked out by a  
mentor friend who would have kicked my butt in private for getting it wrong.  
Result, an embarrassing loss of time in the contest righting my mistake and  
loss in confidence in computer logging from members who are very anti computer  
logging (they reckon they can do it better on paper!) 
 
A technique I use is to replay a contest at high speed on the network  set up 
in my flat using the largest log I have from previous contests.   This has 
shown up where a bottleneck might occur in disk writes or other  problems.
 
Finally take out incompatible hardware or carry adapters.  I had one  machine 
that would not display the CMOS set up screen on a colour monitor. I  took it 
out of my kit because I always expect to have to reset CMOS values and  would 
not have had a mono monitor on site.  Most of my (ancient) computers  use 7 
pin din connectors for the keyboards but the laptops use the mini din  
connectors, I always have spare adapters to go either way so that I can  swap 
keyboards or use one from a laptop on a desktop/tower machine.
 
Malcolm
G0MIC