[Elecraft] K3-S - CW Keying for Contests

Jim Brown jim at audiosystemsgroup.com
Thu Jan 28 01:31:24 EST 2016


I would hesitate to call these "full featured and mature" as compared to 
DXKeeper, which automates applications for awards like DXCC, and 
tabulates totals for dozens of awards by band and mode. Nor as compared 
to N1MM Logger Plus, which supports hundreds of contests and has many 
features that simplify contesting and make the operator more 
competitive. N1MM Logger Plus supports hundreds of rigs; RUMPed supports 
only the handful of rigs the program author owns and is feature-poor 
compared to N1MM Logger Plus. DXKeeper supports IOTA, WAS, WAC, WAZ, 
WPX, CQ Field Award, US counties, VUCC (VHF/UHF grids), Fred Fish (6M US 
grids), and dozens of awards from ham societies in UK, France, Spain, 
Russia, Japan, and lots of other countries. It imports contest logs, and 
allows you to keep track of QSOs by contest!  It also logs TX power, so 
I can sort QSOs by power to check for status of what I've achieved QRP 
(150 countries worked so far).

NY4I just posted statistics for logging programs used by those 
submitting logs for CQWW CW and SSB last year. N1MM was the most popular 
by far -- 44% of logs used it. WinTest was next with 8%, TR4Win with 6%, 
CTESTWIN, N3FJP, and WriteLog , each with 4%, and QARTest with 3%. ALL 
of those are Windoze programs.

I made the recommendations for DXKeeper and N1MM because they are top 
programs in their class -- you won't find yourself having to learn 
something else when you get serious, or export years of logs to a new 
format. They are both FREE, well supported, and reasonably easy to 
learn. Indeed, my experience has been that it's much easier to learn a 
program when you don't have UN-learn another program that does the same 
thing.

FWIW -- I started with WriteLog in 2003, used it for four years. Friend 
AE6RF was running FD for our group and declared that we were using N1MM, 
so I downloaded and learned it. Within four months, I had abandoned 
WriteLog, and I've never looked back. It wasn't the cost, it was the 
features!

73, Jim K9YC

On Wed,1/27/2016 2:17 PM, Bill Frantz wrote:
> I have used RUMlog (a general purpose log program) and RUMped (a 
> contest logger) for several years. They are mature programs and 
> Thomas, DL2RUM provides excellent support. He has a new logging 
> program, RUMlogNG which provides the functionality of both programs 
> and is available at not cost through the Apple App store. 



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