[Trlog] RST QTH

[Paul Kirley]

WA3AAN asked:
In setting up a cfg file for the Il Qso Party I tried using EXCHANGE RECEIVED 
= RST QTH but to no avail ....This was in conjunction with CONTEST = Cal Qso 
Party ... I then tried using the RST QTH with several other contest (i.e. 
cqww, kids day, Mich QP, Fl QP)   and could not get the RST QTH to be excepted 
....  Has anyone been able to get the RST QTH to work ? 


I've had good luck with EXCHANGE RECEIVED = RST DOMESTIC QTH and CAL QSO PARTY.  Alternatively, I have had equally good results with TEXAS QSO PARTY, where additional specification of EXCHANGE RECEIVED wasn't needed.  For whatever reason, I used the first technique in the FQP and the latter recently in the IQP.  Both produced almost-usable Cabrillo files.

By almost-usable Cabrillo files, I mean that in the POST .cbr file, the two RST columns both follow the call worked.  For the typical 599's, my notes describe an easy editing technique using MS Word, which should be modified if appropriate:
(1)  Have Word replace "599 599" with "599", without the quotes as usual.  This will make all the non-599 reports stick out like sore thumbs.  Make notes of them for later manual fixes.
(2)  On Word's replace dialog box, pull down More and check "use wild cards." Then have Word replace 
"(your call)          ??????" with 
"(your call)    599 (your QTH)"
You will have to count spaces in the result of step (1) to see how many to leave between your call and ??????; for my 4-letter call, I use 10 spaces.  I usually leave fewer in the replacement to make the Cabrillo narrower (except for New England QP, which is particular about spacing and so gets special spacing attention).  For example, for Illinois I would replace
W8TM        ??????
with
W8TM  599 Oh
(3)  At this point, any non-599 reports have to be dealt with, based on notes from (1).
(4)  Edit the Cabrillo contest name line, the claimed score line and any special QSO lines.  For example, Illinois rules credit extra QSOs for county-line contacts, and TR can't hold four counties per line in the .dat file, so manual editing of contest name, claimed score and of some QSO lines was necessary in my log.
(5)  Save as plain text from Word, under another filename (whatever the contest prefers).  Look over the result for problems before submitting.

73, Paul W8TM