[WriteLog] Ohio QSO Party module

John E Bastin, K8AJS jbastin@sssnet.com
Mon, 26 Aug 2002 14:48:22 -0400


This past weekend I used WriteLog for the first time in the Ohio QSO 
Party (last year there was no module, so I had to use NA). I ran into 
a quirk that is probably a function of WriteLog, and not of the 
module, that hasn't been a problem before, because most contests 
don't involve working the same station multiple times on the same 
band and mode.

When you work a station the second time, WriteLog will insert 
information in the QSO entry fields that corresponds to information 
copied in previous contacts. I hadn't paid much attention to this 
before, but now I've noticed that WriteLog apparently does a top-down 
search of the log to obtain this data, and displays the data from the 
first time the station was contacted in the contest.

In the Ohio QSO Party, and possibly other contests of this type, one 
entry classification is Mobile, and the Mobile stations move from 
county to county, working stations from each county through which 
they pass. Part of the exchange for Ohio stations is the county.

The problem I had in WriteLog with the top-down search was that, 
after I worked a Mobile station the first time, every time I worked 
them again, I would be shown a display of the first county I worked 
them. This was NOT helpful in determining whether I had already 
worked them in their current location.

I would like to see the search in WriteLog be a bottom-up search, so 
that displayed contest info when I enter a call would be the info 
entered in the most recent previous contact. If this were the case in 
a contest such as the OQP, I could immediately see when I entered the 
call whether my last contact with the station was in the same county, 
or whether they had changed counties and were now in a new one.

If others like the search the way it is, and prefer a top-down 
search, perhaps it could be made an option controlled in the INI 
file. The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that the 
bottom-up search would be very preferable, at least in all the 
situations I can think of.

73,
-- 
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