[UK-CONTEST] RE: IOTA Software

[G3SJJ]

We have used NA for all our IOTA Contest operations from GU6/7/8D since we commenced in1996. At that stage it didn't support the contest and we checked off the multipliers on paper! I was eventually able to convince Dave K8CC to support the contest and he has been most helpful.

Paul EI5DI has done a great job on SDI for single ops, which do in fact constitute some 90% of the entrants anyway. It is probably right that Paul continues to concentrate his efforts on that and let the other prgrammes handle the requirements for multi-station logging.

Since I am no expert in handling/writing/debugging software, my first option is for ease in setting up and NA is good here. It networks well providing you remember to set the same options on each machine! We tend to have one person on each computer for the final setup and go through the various screen items together.

We prefer laptops using PCMCIA cards to obtain the additional ports. (Thanks to those who responded to my request for info and also to G3UEG and G3WGV who loaned us cards.

The main problems here is getting the computer to recognise the additional port(s). Once this is achieved the system usually works first time. Having said that we did spend well over an hour on Saturday morning before we could get it all working, though I suspect that might have been because Chris G3SVL forgot to use the batch his son had created for us!

Once up and running the system worked smoothly, apart from one crash which as Chris says was more likely RF. We had a few problems around that area.

Laptop 1 controlled Radio 1 plus Network
Laptop 2 controlled Radio 2 plus Network
Laptop 3 had Network only. We used a separate stand-alone m/c for Cluster.

NA used to have serious buffer problems and would easily get out of sync if you scrolled back through the log. I mentioned this to K8CC some while back and he is supposed to have sorted it. I can't think we have had any of those problems during the last three years.

As regards Don G3BJ's comments regarding log clean up, this is now more difficult with Cabrillo since there are no mults indicated and no scoring. As Don concluded, it is best to put the .PRN file into Excel, sort on serial number then you can easily delete
all the headers and footers, plus any unwanted columns eg date. If you run NA at the same time, you can do the the clean-up as you work through the Excel file.

The other area of concern is allocation of serial numbers on the mult station. Most of the time it is easy enough to allocate 2 or 3 ahead and just wait until the one before has been logged by the run station, before hitting the Enter key. With band conditions down and local noise problems on 15 and 20 this year, we found the wait was occasionally unacceptable and so we ordered the run op to log a dummy QSO, which will be discounted in the final score. (This is also more difficult now under Cabrillo since there is no allocation of points against a QSO. We will provide a full list of dummy Qs on the summary sheet, (which is also incorporated in the Cabrillo log file)).  Aaagh, life used to be so simple, pre-Cabrillo days!

I'll put some notes up another time regarding the GU8D operation, suffice to say we all enjoyed the contest and our weekend on Guernsey.  Chris G3SJJ


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