[PaQSO] PA QSO Party related utility

[Allen S. Huber]

Greetings all PQP lovers!

While operating the 2003 PA QSO Party I kept coming up with people on 20
M that didn't know their ARRL section.  They could tell me almost any
piece of information that didn't help--city, county, nearest interstate,
closest body of water--but simply didn't know their ARRL section.  This
prompted me to write a little utility program shortly after the 2003
Party.  I called it "SF" for "Section Finder".  SF has a county
"database" behind it of all states with multiple ARRL sections.  You
simply type the first few letters of a county and the matching counties
(and, most important, the ARRL section the county is in) are displayed.
I more or less forgot about the program until right before the 2004
Party.  I took it with me to the contest site, loaded it on the PC where
I was working, and waited to see if it would come in handy.  Indeed, it
did.  Several times the person I was working didn't know the section.
But they DID know the county, and the QSO was in the log with a few
keystrokes.

During off times during the QSO Party we had some discussion about this
little program and immediately after, I came up with Section Finder
1.01.  Added are a few tweaks, including the function of automatically
copying a match to the clipboard where it can be pasted into the logging
program and automatic minimizing of the program once a match is
selected.  I was urged to make it available to all, and I finally have
done so as part of a year-delayed site update.

If you're interested, you can download the program from my personal Web
site at www.allenhuber.com.  Look for the "SF Utility" link under "PA
QSO Party."  I very much welcome comments and your ideas for making the
program even more useful.

73,
Allen Huber, WG3E