[UK-CONTEST] Cabrillo and Birds!

[Cooper Stewart]

Happy New Year all! Two birds with one stone...
Regarding Cabrillo, I don't like it. I cannot see how a file format which is
not delimited ever got this far. Cabrillo in its current form will die. It's
just a question of when. Unfortunately it's like the fax machine. I only
just does what it's meant to do, but the general public don't have the tools
or means to make it better, so it persists.
I have put a picture on my web site of my bird scarer.
http://www.qsl.net/gm4aff and click on the radio button.

Stewart
GM4AFF

-----Original Message-----
From: Nigel Cawthorne [mailto:G3TXF at compuserve.com]
Sent: 05 January 2003 10:57
To: UK Contesting
Subject: [UK-CONTEST] The tyranny of Cabrillo!


Hullo UK Contesters!

Dave G3YMC in his comments on the Stew Perry 160m 
Contest highlighted the problem with Cabrillo. It is NOT
a standard. It's a standard, but with numerous permutations.

For earlier Stew Perry Contests the organisers were happy
to accept a spreadsheet which they would cut and paste
into their points calculating software, but this year they
insisted on "Cabrillo format". OK.

Q: How do you create a "Cabrillo" entry if you've done
the contest in, say, TurboLog?

A: You flaff around for about two hours cutting, pasting
and re- aligning columns (including the totally redundant
two RST columns) so that it fits into the ARRL/Stew Perry
version of the Cabrillo format. [The "Cabrillo" export
from TurboLog is only partly useful - it still has to be
complete realigned - hence the cutting and pasting.]

There's no doubt that Cabrillo is magic when it comes
to adjudicating major contests (eg CQWW and ARRL) but 
it's nothing short of a complete pain for diddly contests,  
because it is NOT a one-for-all standard.

73 - Nigel G3TXF
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