Converting an ADIF log to REG1TEST (EDI) for VHF contests

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Background

  • Many portable VHF activators use paper logging or Ham2K/Polo during the activation.
  • The resulting log-file is ADIF (as for paper log: after manual entry e.g. into FLE).
  • That’s fine for the SOTA data base.

The Problem

  • Most VHF contest organizers require REG1TEST (.EDI).
  • I wanted to avoid installing and learning another full-featured logging program just to convert a single log.

Options Considered

  • Online EDI generator OK2KJT (painful if the log contains more than a dozen QSOs as the log has to be entered manually)
  • Stand-alone conversion tools (none found)
  • WinContest / UCXLog (recommended by the BBT website)
  • Writing a dedicated converter (abandoned)

What Worked

  • WinContest is freeware, runs without installation and imports the FLE-generated ADIF perfectly.
  • All QSOs, serial numbers and locators are imported correctly.

The Unexpected Problem

  • Imported QSOs could not be exported to EDI.
  • Manually entered QSOs exported without any problem.
  • No obvious UI option or documentation explained the different behaviour.

The Workaround

  • WinContest stores imported QSOs in the database table “Import”.
  • Manually entered QSOs are stored in e.g. “144MHz”.
  • Renaming the tables in the MDB database allowed the imported QSOs to be exported successfully.

Conclusion

  • The workaround is certainly not elegant, but it avoided retyping dozens of QSOs and introducing typing errors.
  • If anyone knows the intended way to move imported QSOs into the 144 MHz contest log, I’d be interested to hear it.

73, Roman

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Hi Roman,

I had good success using Tucnak Contest logger to import adif and export as valid EDI/REGTEST file
Tučňák Wiki

(This software is available for Windows, Linux, Android)

I only needed to update the received numbers for each QSO because:

STX (incrementing sent number) is automatically filled with an incrementing number.
Most logging tools just don’t follow the ADIF rules and are not using the proper fields.
STX and SRX for contest exchange numbers and SRX_STRING/STX_STRING for would be the correct fields as far as I understand.

And I have tested the IARU 1 VHF Contest feature in PoLo and had a bad experience. See my report here:
Bug - VHF Contest | Delete QSO increments sent counter - #2 by OE5JFE - PoLo - Issues & Ideas - Ham2K
It is still in BETA so I am not blaming anyone apart from myself from not testing it upfront more carefully. I finally managed to get a valid log going by filling the gaps with ERROR QSO but that was a lot of extra work.

73 Joe

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I had this problem two months ago and started this thread: Creating a log for the backpackers contest

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