[Elecraft] Contesting with logging software on a PC (not MAC)

[Lee J. Imber (WW2DX)]

Hi John,

Welcome back to contesting :)

I have run a fair amount of 24-44 hour tests in the past few years running a 5 year old XP box, N1MM and a pair of K3's in SO2R without incident. The XP box that I use is not used very much and my daily workstation is a Mac. Actually the PC is  tiny Dell dual core that I picked up from ebay for $200. One thing I would recommend is to run your log/db on a USB flash based device, this way if your PC decides to  act up or even worse the drive dies then your log will be safe. This also allows you to quickly move the file to a backup machine. 
Remember the box only needs to handle a few tasks during a short 48 hour period, yes murphy can strike and sometimes its PC's and not Radio's :) 
There are also a few other technologies other then the flash drive approach, you can get a free 2GB account from http://www.dropbox.com and point your log to your dropbox folder and it will backup into the ether in real-time and you can even have the same dropbox folder on a backup PC ready to go. All kinds of options today for a relatively trouble free windoze contesting experience ;)

Hope this helps and good luck!

Lee
WW2DX.com

On Jan 6, 2010, at 3:08 PM, John Lawrence wrote:

> I'm a return veteran contester with lots of wins using the old pencil log with a dupe sheet.
> 
> I've tried various new programs attempting to gain a level of comfort so I might consider a serious entry into some contesting again. You should appreciate that I'd hate to feel the pain of getting part way into the contest and be delayed or loose my logs due to a computer freeze, lock out or reboot.
> 
> For the past year I've been soliciting "contest guru" opinions and come away with conclusions based on inputs of the long term contersters from my past more active years. My conclusion has nothing to do with the suitability of the wonderful K3 as a radio for CW or SSB contesting.
> 
> I'd use a basic mission critical PC with a 386/486 processor, DOS and CT to run the logging process without connection to the Internet during the contest. CT runs with the K3. The more recent contesting software might be ok but Windows is buggy and may crash during the event. 
> 
> Lets hope System 7 can be configured to offer mission critical reliability in the new PC platforms.
> 
> Lastly, I find this to be mostly an off Elecraft topic.
> 
> Happy New Year
> 
> 73,
> John, W1QS
> K3 s/n 2274, K2 s/n 4204 
> 
> mission critical = power supply with extra wattage, two hard drives with less than 10,000 hrs, shadow write utility and clean fan/filter
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