[Dx4win] LOTW, DX4WIN and contest logs

[K0CF]

After posting the note below, I had a few further thoughts 
that I felt I should add. First, when I name groups I choose
the name based on how I want it to appear on my QSL label
when I have "print group names" enabled. For instance, the
CQ WW group is actually named "CQ WW Contest".

Second, this method gives you great flexibility in searching
for contest info. For example, you can specify just "CQ WW
Contest" for the group, and leave date and mode blank to list
(and count) all CQ WW contacts in your log. By adding mode in
to the search you can find out how many CQ WW CW QSOs you 
have made, etc. Or you can specify a date range, e.g. 01/01/2008
to 12/31/2008 to find out how many QSOs you made in all sections
of the CQ WPX last year. And so on...

I hope that this gives you some good ideas about use of groups
in DX4Win.

73,
Craig, KØCF



-----Original Message-----
From: dx4win-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:dx4win-bounces at mailman.qth.net]
On Behalf Of K0CF
Sent: Saturday, March 14, 2009 8:33 PM
To: 'Jim Reisert AD1C'; 'DX4WIN POSTINGS'
Subject: Re: [Dx4win] LOTW, DX4WIN and contest logs

I would go one farther than Jim has suggested.  Good data base 
design principles require that you do not define a field to filter
a database where other fields can already do the task. Hence, I
only define groups for "CQ WW", "CQ WPX", "ARRL DX", etc., since
you can filter for the section (CW, SSB or RTTY) in the mode field
and the year of the contest in the date field. Doing it this way
I have only 18 groups defined that cover all the contests I have
ever worked, and I am in NO danger of ever running out of group
numbers.

Note that the group will not always be able to ignore the mode,
since some contests like the Makrothen are RTTY only. But most
often there is no need to reference the mode in the group 
definition.

73,
Craig, KØCF


-----Original Message-----
From: dx4win-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:dx4win-bounces at mailman.qth.net]
On Behalf Of Jim Reisert AD1C
Sent: Saturday, March 14, 2009 5:52 PM
To: DX4WIN POSTINGS
Subject: Re: [Dx4win] LOTW, DX4WIN and contest logs

On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 2:59 PM, Bill AC0W <ac0w at charter.net> wrote:

> Group numbers work good as long as you have fewer than 254 contests to
> enter. Once you exceed that you need to find some other way of
> differentiating the different contest groups.

There is no need to assign a unique group # to each contest. I have a
group number for ARRL DX CW, a different group number for CQ WPX RTTY,
etc.  You can separate contest logs base on the group number AND date.
 You'll need many fewer groups this way.

73 - Jim AD1C

-- 
Jim Reisert AD1C/Ø, <jjreisert at alum.mit.edu>, http://www.ad1c.us