[Dx4win] Unhappy with DX4WIN

[Mike Mellinger WA0SXV]

You gloss over something there.  You always have to check the DXCC total
after doing anything with the country file.  Mine generally changes by one
or two.  I really should document it next time it happens so that the
country file can reflect the special countries.

The issue this time is a glitch in the country file updating or something
causing about 15,000 QSO's to lose their state information.  I had the
brilliant idea of downloading my entire LOTW QSL file to update at least
some of the Q's.  But apparently if the Upload Confirmed flag is marked the
download has no effect.  Or at least it appears that way.

Even worse is the damage done to the county information.  Apparently if you
remove the state the county goes with it.  Now I can re-enter that
information from about 3,000 QSL's.  Nice pleasant task.

The fact is that I did *NOTHING* to cause this problem except add FJ and the
TO5 station as FJ.  Now, I assume that every time I try to do such a thing
I'll get the grid index out of range error again.  Do I lose the state
information every time also?

Fact is, due to ADIF, there is a unique number assigned to each DXCC entity.
DX4WIN knows about this and could exploit it by storing that number in each
log record.  Then the country file would only be used to determine the
number.  Perhaps not all deleted countries have a number but DX4WIN could
create their own for those in some way.  Other log programs have this
problem -- how do they solve it?

I also suspect a glitch in the LOTW updating that may be clearing the
Confirmed Flag. Just a suspicion.

To be blunt, there is a serious defect in the DX4WIN design that a defect in
the DX4WIN program exploits.

73,
Mike WA0SXV


-----Original Message-----
From: dx4win-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:dx4win-bounces at mailman.qth.net]
On Behalf Of Tom Branch
Sent: Sunday, January 06, 2008 16:33
To: dx4win at mailman.qth.net
Subject: RE: [Dx4win] Unhappy with DX4WIN

Mike,

I've been a user since 0.93B--pretty much since the beginning.  I don't know
why you're having problems with country files.  I simply replace my existing
file with latest AD1C version, check the DXCC summary to make sure nothing
changed, and all is good to go. Perhaps you are trying to merge the country
files? There may be a good reason to merge your country files if you have
some unique callsign mappings or QSL managers not in the AD1C release.
Personally I gave up merging years ago and simply use the AD1C release "as
is".

I'm not sure that the country file actually changes anything in the log file
but I could be wrong.  I've never tried to go back to an older country file
but may try it just to see what happens.

73 de Tom, K4NR