[VHFcontesting] { SPAM 1 }::Re: ARRL Contest Robot and 903 mhz Q's

Tue Jan 31 09:01:25 EST 2006

Hello David
   I hope you dont let some computer program stop contesting. I sure
appreciate all those qso's from EL79. I still use paper and pencil here
and a 39 cent stamp.

73 and Good Dx

Bill Capps
AF4OD/rover

>>> "Kenneth E. Harker" <kenharker at kenharker.com> 01/30/06 8:25 AM >>>
On Mon, Jan 30, 2006 at 09:00:37AM -0500, David wrote:
> Steve,
> 
> It appears that ARRL is not thinking clearly.  When changing from A
to 50, B 
> to 144 etc. there are more characters  the used which, IMHO,
complicates the 
> program, not simplifies it.  Seems like its change for change sake. 
It 
> would seem that ARRL could design the program to accept both the A or
50 
> entries.

The ARRL log submission robot is not the only "customer" of Cabrillo
format
data.  As someone who has written software that reads in Cabrillo logs
myself,
I can tell you it's madness to have to anticipate and provide for seven
or 
eight different ways to designate six meters, nine or ten different
ways to
designate two meters, three different ways to designate 902 MHz, etc.

The A,B,C,D,9,E, etc. band encoding is not widely used outside of North

America and skips over the relatively new 70 MHz band some Region I
countries
now have.  Cabrillo is not intended to be a strictly ARRL or North
American
file standard.  The use of numerical frequency designations is also 
consistent with the band designations on HF.

> Another thing, was the program change announced before hand???  If it
was a 
> lot of us didn't get the info.

The use of non-numerical designations for VHF+ bands in the file
format
standard was deprecated in August, 2002.  The use of 903 and 76G were 
deprecated in February, 2004, when 902 and 75G became the only
accepted
designations for those bands.  This is all documented in the spec
History 
of Changes: http://www.kkn.net/~trey/cabrillo/updates.txt 

> The VHF-DX Cabrillo file worked fine with ARRL for 5 years.  Was it
"broke". 
> I don't think so.

For almost the last two years, it has been.  The ARRL log submission
robot might have continued being lenient about accepted logs with
errors
in order to give software authors an opportunity to update their
products.

> David, excontester

It does not surprise me that contesters might first find out about
these
changes when encountering an error message from the log submission
robot.
After all, it's not like people think about log file formats on a
daily
basis.  I also think it's a huge overreaction to leave contesting
because
of something like this.  How many 902 MHz QSOs did you make?  Changing

ten or fewer 903s in the log to 902s with a text editor seems like a 
trivial amount of effort compared to the rest of the process of
preparing 
for the weekend, operating the contest, preparing the Cabrillo log, and

emailing it in.

> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "STeve Andre'" <andres at msu.edu>
> To: <vhfcontesting at contesting.com>
> Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 11:26 AM
> Subject: Re: [VHFcontesting] ARRL Contest Robot and 903 mhz Q's
> 
> 
> > On Sunday 29 January 2006 17:46, David wrote:
> >> Thanks Ned,  but it just isn't worth the trouble.  I have been a
faithful
> >> VHF contester having only missed one ARRL contest in over a
decade.  I
> >> almost stopped contesting when the Cabrillo requirements came out
since I
> >> didn't have a computer.  After getting a computer and struggling
many 
> >> hours
> >> to learn how to submit the scores via the VHF-DX program, I just
don't 
> >> feel
> >> like having to play musical chairs with ARRL again.  They need to
keep it
> >> simple or they have lost another contester.
> >>
> >> David
> >
> > I hope you won't leave.  Formats of things to change from time to
> > time.  My first contest was written down in a file and I didn't
realize
> > about Cabrillo so I spent an 'enjoyable' evening writing little
awk
> > scripts to form the data into something the robot would take. It
was
> > kinda funny--I'd submit the log and the robot would crab about
> > something, and after four cycles of this I got it right.
> >
> > So I see I'm going to have to change my system for the June
contest.
> > If all thats changed is the band designators, I think that is a
fairly
> > minimal change.  Backwards compatibility is nice but things do
> > change.  I'll have to do more reading on this but it doesn't sound
> > like an earth shattering problem as yet.
> >
> > --STeve Andre'
> > wb8wsf  en82
> > _______________________________________________
> > VHFcontesting mailing list
> > VHFcontesting at contesting.com 
> > http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/vhfcontesting 
> > 
> 
> 
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-- 
Kenneth E. Harker WM5R
kenharker at kenharker.com 
http://www.kenharker.com/ 

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