I am currently pondering over the format of the ADIF log that my SOTA CSV Log editor produces - I need to find a way of reliably telling the difference between being an activator and being a chaser when the limited information from a SOTA CSV log is exported from CSV to ADIF and imported into another logging program.
To try to make the program useful for both Chasers and Activators the current version of my SOTA CSV Editor uses two different ADIF output formats to ensure that the Grid locator of the summit (calculated from Lat/Long given in the Summits DB) is entered into the corrected ADIF field. Similarly it creates one of two custom ADIF fields for the summit reference for chasers and for activator (these are really of no use to other programs).
Also in the ADIF it used to add the Summit reference to the end of any Comments that appear in the CSV log, but at present I have made it only do this for chaser logs, this mainly so that another add-on I have produced for the VQLog program can extract chased summit reference from the comments (the only field normally available for such information).
I know that one person has noticed the change of my CSV Log editor not putting the Summit Reference into the ADIF output for activator logs and whilst it would be easy to put it back in for both chaser and activator logs doing so without some something that shows the difference between being a chaser and an activator makes automatically using the reference information from the comment for other purposes impossible.
So the question for anyone that uses other logging software and does both activating and chasing is do you put all SOTA contacts into your logging program and if so do you do anything different for chasing/activating or do you not put that information into the log at all.
I need to find a way of reliably telling the difference between
being an
activator and being a chaser
Ask the user of the program?
That would be ok if only one program (SOTA CSV Editor) was involved, the other program has no concept of such things and whilst my add-on for that could ask the operator to indicate which QSO’s are chaser and which ones not that sort of defeats the reason for having a program searching the logs for SOTA information contained in the comments in the first place.
I suppose I could make the Exported ADIF say:
Chased: G/WB-009
Activated: GW/NW-011
But I’m more interested in how anyone else might already handle such things !
If the data doesn’t contain the info explicitly you can try to infer but that always opens up the possibility of inferring the wrong thing. The only sure fire way is to add the missing data along the line somewhere. I’ve only skimmed the ADIF specs but if I read it right you can have your own custom fields. You need to add a custom field when importing from the CSV file to say whether the record is a chaser or activator. That’s the only way to be sure.
At one time I’d have said you could infer that anything where the Own-Callsign ended in /P was an activator QSO but… you don’t need to use /P anymore in the UK and it’s not mandatory in the USA. I modified the SMSBOT to allow people to spot themselves with getting a /P tagged on whether they asked for it simply to handle this situation.
What all this shows anyone who tries to write any log keeping software is that it’s anything but a simple problem. The problem is it does seem a trivial problem when you start out and then you find yourself in the area between rocks and hard places. The database has it easy because it knows if you are entering activations or chases and it keeps them in separate tables.
Oh, and to add a bit of spice to the mix, don’t forget you’ll need to be able handle S2S QSOs as well as normal chases and activations.
I wrote my own logging program but the fields I use in the program follow ADIF.
If I log a chase I put SOTA in the SIG field and the summit reference in the SIG_INFO field.
If I log an activation I put SOTA in the MY_SIG field and the summit reference in the MY_SIG_INFO field. Of course the location for this contact also gives an indication of which summit was activated.
If I log a S2S contact then all 4 fields will have entries in them.
This way I can search my log looking for entries in the SIG and MY_SIG fields to find SOTA, activator, chaser, or S2S entries.