[Dx4win] Where (what field) do you specify the city name for U.S. QSOs?

[Jim Reisert AD1C]

On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 1:52 AM, Lee Hallin <hallinl at lanecc.edu> wrote:

> Do you put the city name in the QTH field (Ex. Los Angeles) .. while also populating the STATE field with the state abbreviation?
>
> Do you put the city name in the QTH field along with the state (Ex. Los Angeles,CA)?
>
> If you aren't using DX4WIN v8.??, what field, and what form/convention, do you put the city name in?
>
> I'm taking a stab at County Hunting and don't want to have to go through my log and look up each county, by "hand", using the city name and state in the QSO.
>
> I'm thinking of writing a program that would look at an ADIF file and update the CNTY field.  For this reason, I was wanting to know of any conventions that might already be in use.

Hi Lee,

DX4WIN has always had state and county fields. The QTH field was added
in 8.0x.  Before that, if you asked 100 different users, 99 of them
would have done it a different way, but most of them put the QTH in
the "Notes for this Call" field.  There is a Multiple QSO operation in
8.0x which can move the QTH from the Notes field to the QTH field
(assuming you used a standard way of separating name/QTH in that
field).

Sometime around 2000, I got interested in county hunting also. I'm
embarrassed to admit that I believe I have all 3077 confirmations, but
I have never submitted the paperwork to get a USACA #.  I'm down to a
dozen or so to confirm CW-only, and may wait to finish that one before
submitting (if anyone's willing to drive around Kentucky for me....)

Having said all that, the easiest way to get started is to enter the
county only from the QSLs you have on hand.  There are essentially
four levels of difficulty: the easiest counties (like Cook, IL and
Fulton, GA); the hardest counties (like San Juan, WA, Kalawao, HI and
Nantucket, MA), the ones that are on in most state QSO parties and are
often run on the CH nets (easy), and the last (hard) group which are
the ones that are infrequently run (like Loving, TX, or Grant/Hooker,
NE). Chances are you have confirmations from the easiest group
already. The next group, you'll work many of them even with only a
couple years of effort, either on the CH nets, or by operating the
state and county QSO parties. The third (hard) group requires more
vigilance, and the last (hardest) group you must work them when they
are on.  The reason I said all this is that if you bother to look up
the cities from your QSOs, chances are they'll be in the easiest two
groups, not the hardest two groups. IMHO, the level of effort is not
worth it because it takes less time to work them again than you would
spend looking up the data.  You may find a few in the harder group,
but again, you're going to have to look up a LOT of cities just to get
a dozen or so counties out of them.

There are ZIP code to county databases out there, however, counties do
not necessarily follow ZIP code boundaries. If you are going to look
up the counties using QRZ.COM, people change calls (and move), so a
QSO you had in 1998 might not be the same station/QTH listed on
QRZ.COM today.

So I wish you luck, but the easiest way is to just get on the air and
work the state and county QSO parties, and the CH net.  It's work, but
far from impossible to work 2000 counties in a year.  Plus, you'll
definitively know which counties you worked, and it's kind of
addictive!

73 - Jim AD1C

p.s. if you decide to use MRCs (mobile reply cards), don't put more
than one state on a card (even if you work a mobile operator in
multiple states).  I learned this way too late, and it will make it
harder for the two volunteers to check all my confirmations (it's
becomes a sorting issue).

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