[WriteLog] Serial number again

[Jerry Flanders]

At 16:23 1/25/03 -0600, Charles Morrison wrote:
>Forgive me for asking the same question that I know has been answered
>before.  Unfortunately, I never encountered it and just glazed over the
>answers, now I wished I hadn't.
>
>SO2R setup.  2 Radios, 2 computers.  One is auto cq'ing, the second is s/p.


I have the same setup, but when things slow down I will CQ on both, 
"interleaving" them.

>I receive an answer from a station on my cq radio, click on his call and
>send the exchange, simultaneously, I s/p a station who's not a dupe and get
>ready to go back to him, so I click on his call.  Now I've got a call in
>each qso box, but with the duplicate serial numbers!  I know there's
>something that I did wrong, because I know this has been addressed, but I
>cant for the life find it in my archives of the reflector.

This is how WL works in this situation at the present time. You must always 
delay entering the second call until you have logged the first one. We 
occasionally discuss this problem - I think one of us on the list once 
offered to develop a new scheme to always provide unique serial numbers for 
WL a year or two ago, but as far as I know that never got anywhere.  It 
must be impossible, or Wayne would have done it by now.

>What would be either the appropriate keystrokes, or your personal preferred
>keystrokes to handle this situation.

I try not to make the mistake, but if it happens and I discover it, I 
"clear entry" (F11 on my setup) one of them and log the other as quickly as 
I can, then re-enter the one I cleared  (it gets a new serial nr).  If you 
haven't sent the number yet, no problem. If you have then you can re-send 
it several times, or even prepare a special buffer just for this situation 
to tell the op the number changed to make sure it is corrected there. I 
remember yesterday somebody changed the number he gave me in the middle of 
the Q - must have been something like this.

The first contest I operated SO2R using serial numbers I had many log 
problems. All I could do was report this in a note to the log checkers 
along with my entry.

>  Suggestions are welcome for sure.  I
>found working the two radios extremely exciting, makes the pace much faster
>and definitely is not a hindrance like it is in M/S with the band changes.
>To work 2 bands at basically the same time.. great..

Me too.  Fun, plus you get to keep working if one setup has a problem, you 
always have a complete backup log (put one of the computer systems on a 
UPS), and you can pick up maybe 10 - 25 percent more QSOs.

>but handing out
>duplicate serial numbers to everyone in the world is a sure fire way to have
>your cq's permanently ignored.

I wonder how the judging committee software handles dupe serials. Surely 
the guy innocently receiving the dupe should not be penalized, but maybe 
the sender would be (maybe not).

>Again, my apologies for losing the emails that had these answers.. but if
>someone is gracious enough to help, I'd be much appreciative.  And also my
>apologies to the 6 stations that got duplicates today, cause I know I did it
>more then once before I caught it and quit.

I worked you twice - at 1945 on 20m and again at 2052 on 15m. The numbers 
you gave me show a rate of 72 Qs in 67 mins.

Jerry W4UK

>Charlie
>KI5XP