K5ZD announcements

New WPX Cabrillo Log Check Page

I am pleased to announce a new tool to help everyone format their logs correctly for the WPX Contest.

http://www.cqwpx.com/logcheck/

The Cabrillo Log Check page will check the format of your Cabrillo log file for any mode of the CQ WPX Contest. Use this to check your log before submitting it to the robot.

1. Select the contest mode from the list.
2. Browse to the log file on your computer.
3. Press process to upload the file and start the check.
4. Fix any errors in your log file and repeat. You may go through the process as many times as needed.

Once your log is error free, please email it to the robot address shown.

The new page supports CQ WPX RTTY, SSB, and CW. Logs can be in Cabrillo v2 or v3 format.

I invite as many people as possible to try a test log in the next few days. Looking for any suggestions or problem reports so that we can fix them before the WPX RTTY contest this weekend.

I want to specially thank Tzetzo, LZ2FQ, for his work on the programming that makes this page possible.

K5ZD announcements

Log Checking Reports for WPX SSB 2010

Everyone who submitted a log for the 2010 CQ WPX SSB Contest should have received an email with a link to their log checking report. The link uses an encrypted address so that only you will have access to your report. (You are welcome to share the link with others.)

The log check report is a text file that contains all the information about how your log was scored and any errors that were found. Sections include:

  • Scoring summary by band
  • List of calls not found in the other station’s log (Not in Log)
  • List of calls that were cross checked or judged to be incorrect (Bad calls)
  • List of calls that only you worked that were not removed from your log (Uniques)
  • Additional sections may list operating time or band change violations if they exist.

To provide additional feedback on your operation, the report also includes information on how your exchange and call was received by others.

  • List of stations that did not copy your exchange information correctly
  • List of stations that did not copy your call correctly

It can be shocking to see a log check report for the first time. Everyone makes errors.  The best ops have spent years improving their skills and learning a vocabulary of callsigns.  Study your errors and work to improve them in the next contest. 

To help you compare your results to those of top scorers, we have made a few log check reports public (including my own).

Note: Your browser may ask you if you want to download the file.  Select yes.  Then use any text editor such as Notepad or Wordpad to view the file.

Your email with link to the log checking report was sent to the email account you used to submit the log. If you included an email address in the EMAIL: field of your Cabrillo log file we sent one to that as well.  Using a valid email address to submit your log (or provide one in the log file) is very important.  We use that address if we need to contact you about your entry.

If you did not receive an email and would like to see your report please contact me at k5zd@cqwpx.com.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the 2010 CQ WPX SSB Contest.  Looking forward to seeing all of you in the WPX SSB contest March 26-27, 2011.

Thanks to David, K2DSL, for the programming work to make the log check report viewer and email sender.  Also thanks to George, K5TR, for his expert IT support assistance.  And of course, to Ken, K1EA, for the software that checks the logs and makes the reports.

K5ZD announcements

Logs for WPX SSB 2010 Now Public

The CQ WW Contest has been making submitted logs public for many years.  The last two WPX surveys indicated that WPX participants wanted the same. 

There are several reasons for open logs. 

  • They can be a great learning tool.  How did the competition beat me? What can I do differently next year?
  • They can help us understand our mistakes.  What call did the guy work that I though was working me?
  • They are a source of propagation and activity data that can be analyzed. There are number of web sites that use the CQWW log data to show interesting charts or analysis.  We want the same thing for the WPX Contest.

Not everyone is in favor of open logs.  But, as we saw in the recent WPX Survey results, there is a significant majority (over 85%) that do want to see the logs.  In a sport where so much is done from the privacy of our own stations, the transparency of open logs promotes fair play and sportsmanship.

Getting to public logs was a process. First, we had to introduce a rule for the 2010 contest that notified entrants their log may be made public.

XIV. Declaration: By submitting an entry in the CQ WPX Contest you agree that: 1) you have read and understood the rules of the contest and agree to be bound by them, 2) you have operated according to all rules and regulations of your country that pertain to amateur radio, 3) your log entry may be made open to the public, and 4) all actions and decisions of the WPX Contest Committee are official and final.

That cleared the way for us to publish the logs.

While everyone wants to see open logs, they don’t want to see their email and postal address made public. Thanks to some programming help from David, K2DSL, we have a way to process all logs and remove the ADDRESS and EMAIL fields.  We went one step more and removed any line beginning with “X-” as these are added by various logging programs to store information including email addresses.  David also cleverly looks inside the soapbox and blanks out anything that looks like an email address.

We also made the committment that we would not publish logs that were submitted as CHECKLOG.  These logs are very valuable to the log checking process, but the participants do not want their logs to be scored or results published.  It seems only fair that we not publish their logs as well.

The logs for the WPX SSB Contest 2010 are now published to the web site.  Visit http://www.cqwpx.com/publiclogs/
Or you can get there by going to the Results tab and selecting the Public Logs button.

The CW logs will be posted some time in January after the log checking has been completed.