[Elecraft] EQP 2004 logging problem (long)

[Augie Hansen]

To All EQP 2004 participants,

During the EQP I used the EQP_2004.exe program for logging. It worked well
until very near the end of the QSO party period. During the last hour I
keyed in the data for QSO number 107 and pressed the Enter key. A dreaded
error message popped up informing me that the program had committed an
illegal operation and was being terminated. I dutifully clicked OK and the
program exited. Then I checked my log file and found it had 0 bytes in it!
It had been truncated. Had I made any backups? No, stupid me -- just the
opposite of what I tell my students to do. I continued operating in EQP,
using a paper log to pick up contacts 108 through 110 before time ran out.

Then I tried to recover the lost file using Norton Utilities and some of the
standard Windows accessories, but to no avail. I made sure that no new files
were written to my hard drive because that would likely overwrite my log
data if it was still on the disk. I almost gave up after many futile
attempts, but this morning I did a search (using another computer) for "disk
editor program" on the Web and came upon PTS Disk Editor, a freebee from our
friends in Moscow. I put it on a floppy disk and ran it on my logging
system, which is WinBook Z1 running Windows Me. PTSDE104.exe runs in a DOS
window -- slowly, but it runs. And it found many of the missing sectors in
response to a search string of <LogLine>, the tag Toby uses to start each
XML-formatted log entry. I couldn't automatically recover the data, but I
transcribed the values into an Excel spreadsheet (again, on another machine)
and then made a CSV (comma separated values) file. 

HELP: I'm missing a few entries that could not be recovered. Here is the
surrounding context and the placeholders for the missing entries. If you had
a contact with me in the QSO Party, please help me fill in the missing data
for contact numbers 55-58 and 105-107.

Contact,Date,Time,Band(m),Mode,Call,Sent,Rcvd,Name,State,Rig,SN/Power,
...
54,3/13/2004,2244,20,SSB,K9VS,59,57,Jeff,WI,TS2000,100,
55,3/13/2004,2250,20,SSB,K3MZ,57,45,,,,,
56,,,,SSB,,,,,,,,
57,,,20,SSB,N7XY,59,59,Bob,WA,K2,#3273,
58,3/14/2004,0023,20,SSB,WD8RIK,59,59,Larry,MI,K2,#60,
...
104,3/14/2004,1358,20,SSB,KG4ZDS,59,59,Clay,FL,IC718,5,
105,3/14/2004,,,SSB,,,,,,,,
106,3/14/2004,,,SSB,,,,,,,,
107,3/14/2004,,20,SSB,,,,,FL,,,
108,3/14/2004,1439,20,SSB,N1DKF,59,54,Sylvester,RI,,900,
...

By the way, I think Toby did a good job on the program, especially given the
limited time available to him. The cause of the program exception is
unknown. It could have been a problem on my disk, the OS, or something I did
wrong in operating the program. The lessons learned are 1) use beta software
with caution, and 2) make frequent backups.

Thanks in advance,
Gus Hansen / KB0YH

Email: KB0YH@arrl.net
.....................
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