[Cwo] preliminary report for CWO 2012

Sat Sep 8 04:54:39 PDT 2012

Alright, if we do intend to make CWO a world-class annual event I suppose we
need to be "letter perfect" for determining winners.  So be it.  I fixed my
log.   Took less than 30 seconds.  Thanks, Alan.

Jim, N3JT

From: ad6e00 at gmail.com [mailto:ad6e00 at gmail.com] On Behalf Of Alan Maenchen
Sent: Saturday, September 08, 2012 12:26 AM
To: Jim Talens
Cc: cwo at kkn.net
Subject: Re: [Cwo] preliminary report for CWO 2012

Jim,

I don't think I'm being overly anal about checking names.  Take other
competitive events like Sprint and NAQP. They do the same thing.
What makes CWO different from CWT is that this is THE competitive event
where we give out trophies. Scores are close at the top, so log checking is
a must.  Making CWO a top ranking CW competition was my marching orders when
I signed up, and I aim to keep pushing for that distinction. Maybe I'm being
a bit overly dramatic, but that's my feeling.

If your friend sends you his name as Pedro, yet his log says Pete .. then
you WILL get dinged for that QSO because there is a mis-match between what
he says he sent you and what you copied. I suggest that you tell him about
this. I have no way of knowing about such friendships. Now, if he sends
Pedro, and you copy Pedro, all would be copacetic IF he edits his log before
sending it in and changes his name to Pedro for that QSO.  Then it works
fine. Names do not have to be all the same. They only need to match on a QSO
by QSO basis. 

As to the "Name" issue, yes .. your logs do indeed have "Name" as your sent
name instead of "Jim". For example:
QSO: 7034 CW 2012-09-01 1200 N3JT 1 Name KE1B 1 RICH

Now, as I said earlier, this is a very common error. There are two ways to
fix this.  First (the right way), setup N1MM (or whatever you're using) so
that the logger knows your real name.  "Name" is just a place holder because
the logger wasn't told your real name.  

The other method is to open your log in a text editor (Notepad, NOT Word).
Then do Ctrl-H to do a global replace of "Name" with "JIM". Click on
"Replace All".  Done!  It's really quite easy.  I just did it to your log
and now that QSO looks like this:
QSO: 7034 CW 2012-09-01 1200 N3JT 1 JIM KE1B 1 RICH

All the other QSOs are also corrected. Then save the file and submit.

73, Alan  AD6E

On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 6:45 PM, Jim Talens <jtalens at verizon.net> wrote:

I understand what you are trying to do and why, Alan.  However, I think you
are being unnecessarily strict on this point.   While it is laudable that
you be a strict log checker, the overall impact of not having NAME in the
sender's log seems trivial against the other errors of callsign and serial
number.   Besides, the fact is that N1MM clearly shows "Jim" in the exchange
block but the Cabrillo file just says "Name."   So now I have to go through
all these and change them?  I am not anxious to do that.   Come to think of
it, I need to check to see if NAME appeared in the summary at the top or
everywhere throughout the log.  I don't\ remember as I type this message.  

On another issue, you should know that some guys give a different name as a
humorous twist to the exchange.  For example, W1UU always gives me "Pedro"
in lieu of "Pete": in all on-air CWops events.  True, he should probably
indicate that in his log for those QSOs, but if he does not then I may be
penalized when in fact I copied what he sent to me.  So this is reason for
me to wonder if focusing on the name field is appropriate or necessary,
Alan.

I have not yet received any notice from you regarding my erroneous "name"
label in my logs.  I think you said you were sending warnings to those who
did that so they can resubmit.  

73,

Jim, N3JT

From: ad6e00 at gmail.com [mailto:ad6e00 at gmail.com] On Behalf Of Alan Maenchen
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2012 1:52 PM
To: Jim Talens
Cc: cwo at kkn.net

Subject: Re: [Cwo] preliminary report for CWO 2012

Jim,

For CWT it probably doesn't matter since no one looks at the logs after the
event.
For CWO I actually look at the logs and do QSO to QSO comparison to see who
made errors and reduce the score based on a mismatch. The presumption is the
sending station did not err in sending his info (NR, NAME).  Thus when the
software compares my log to his log, it says I copied "RON" while the other
station sent "NAME".  Obviously, I copied wrong and I get the score ding.

Yes, I could just ignore any log that has "NAME" as the sent info, but that
takes more work. More importantly, people should be competent.  Sending in a
log with this sort of error is just stupid (been there, done that) and it
does cause trouble. 

It's easy for me to fix with Notepad, but I'm kicking them all back just to
make the guy aware of this problem.

I don't think it's just an N1MM problem.  In Writelog, I get asked to enter
my NAME with a pop-up window when I tell the logger to generate the Cabrillo
file.  Hard to ignore it.

Hmmmm .... along with my age old promise to enter a DX contest and send true
RST (never did that, but I keep promising that I will some day), maybe I'll
enter Sprint with the name "NAME".   ;-)    Even better than
Rumpelstiltskin.  I know, I have a very strange sense of humor.  Back in the
days of the Internet Sprint, you got a 10,000 point deduction if you used
the name Bevis or Butthead.

73, Alan  AD6E

On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 11:09 AM, Jim Talens <jtalens at verizon.net> wrote:

So what if NAME is "name" instead of the actual name?   I saw that happened
in the creation of one of my logs but figured it was artifact for CWO in
N1MM and not germane to the purpose of submitting the log.  I would not use
that as a criterion for rejecting logs, frankly.

Jim, N3JT

From: cwo-bounces at kkn.net [mailto:cwo-bounces at kkn.net] On Behalf Of Alan
Maenchen
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2012 1:40 AM
To: cwo at kkn.net
Subject: [Cwo] preliminary report for CWO 2012

I'm fighting to get out from under a great pile of logs!

I've done an initial look at about 1/3 of the logs presently in the IN
basket:
Session 1:  38
Session 2:  40
Session 3:  27

Biggest mistake in the logs is the sent name is "Name"   ;-)
I'm kicking those back to the sender and asking him to fix the log. I'd say
about 1 in 10 logs have THIS error. This is totally ridiculous!

The process is mind numbing:
WA6BNM did an excellent job collecting the logs. Each log is being sent to
me as an individual email attachment. Bruce added a number to the log file
name so I have a quick indication of which session the log is for.  So far,
only one log was a combined log with two sessions worth of QSOs in it. I
have to manually extract each attachment into Notepad, then save it into the
proper session directory. Then I add the basic info of call, name, email
address, class, etc into a spreadsheet.  Later, After log checking, I'll
take each checked log and manually enter the final score for each log. Then
the easy job will be to sort the spreadsheet to see who won.

Significant % of logs are from EU !!!  Probably in the 20-30% range.
That's a tremendous improvement from last year.

Also;  about 30% of the logs came from people who did NOT enter last year.
This represents a good growth curve .. if I don't subtract a similar number
that I think didn't return from last year. Time will tell how this plays
out. Still have over a week before log submission deadline.

After I get caught up in this process, I'll search the logs and try to drum
up significant but missing logs. I have a feeling that will bring in a bunch
more.

73, Alan  AD6E

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.kkn.net/pipermail/cwo/attachments/20120908/0fe26dfa/attachment-0001.html 