SOTA info now in new ADIF 3.0.4 Specification

Old Reflector
1

I see that the new ADIF spec contains SOTA information:

MY_SOTA_REF the logging station’s International SOTA Reference.

SOTA_REF the contacted station’s International SOTA Reference.

Both are of type “SOTARef” which is defined as:

a sequence of Characters representing an International SOTA Reference. The sequence comprises:

an ITU prefix
if applicable, a SOTA subdivision
a / Character
a SOTA Reference Number

Examples:
W2/WE-003
G/LD-003

2

In reply to G8TMV:
Thanks for the info (ADIF VER 3.0.4)

So, now everybody will have to use these 2 ADIF fields.
I’m expecting that soft logs (such as LOGGER32) will also use this new normalization

73 Alain F6ENO

3

In reply to G8TMV:

That means I’ll be tweaking my next release of SOTA CSV Editor to use these instead of the User defined versions I used before (‘SOTA’ and ‘MY_SOTA’).

Stewart G0LGS

4

In reply to G8TMV:

Good news for Mac Hams. The latest beta of MacLoggerDX now supports both of the new SOTA ADIF fields.

Thank you Don, VE3VRW for keeping MLDX on the bleeding edge!

73, pat KI4SVM

5

I am running the latest version of Logger32 V3.49.
I had a look at the help files.
It only has support for ADIF up to 2.8.1
There is no mention of support for ADIF 3.x.x

73
Dave
GM4NFI

6

In reply to GM4NFI:
The ADIF 3.04 release required a major rewrite of many programs including Log4OM some developers decided not to implement 3.04 and others are still doing so.

We have now completed implementation and the two SOTA fields are included but to ensure full SOTA support we had to add a few program specific fields.

So you are best advised to contact logger32 developers and ask what’s happening about this.

73 Terry G4POP
Log4OM Development Team

7

In reply to GM4NFI:

Ah yes, XML. How does that famous (to programmers) quote go:

“I had a problem with data representation and I thought XML was the answer. Now I have two problems.”

Andy
MM0FMF

8

In reply to MM0FMF:

I realize it is probably a much larger problem than I can imagine, but I look forward to the day when SOTA accepts ADIF uploads. That will put an end to all the accessory programs and other methods of cleaning up SOTA logs into CSV and TSV files (like my dirty little Excel MACRO) and make uploading logs a SNAP.

Andy - I know better than to ask when we might expect it. And you -KNOW- I appreciate what you and the whole SOTA-MT do to keep SOTA running. Thank you.

On the still waiting list, although I have tried 4 different people now, I still have not gotten any answer about who to send the updated W5-ARMS to. The W5T database no longer matched the currently posted W5T arm by 79 summits.

Mike - KD5KC.
El Paso, Texas - DM61rt.
W5-SOTA association Manager.

9

In reply to KD5KC:

It’s a perfectly valid question Mike. First we needed to get some SOTA fields into the ADIF specs. Then we needed to wait for developers to add support for those fields. Then we needed to wait for users to update their logging programs. We know people don’t like updating software, c.f. Windows XP end of life, we knew that was coming in 2014 since 2009 but lots of people have done nothing about it.

The basics are all in place now and it would be reasonable to consider how to add ADIF support. I wont want to remove the existing format support as it works. What would be nice if it could read the file just once and import both activations and chases. I made an improvement with V2 format in that you can feed the same file into the activation or chase code and it figures out what is in the file and ignores things it doesn’t want or like. The fundamental limit to having to import it twice is based on how the existing code worked. As this is new then it seems reasonable to remove those limits.

That doesn’t give you a date for when! There are some other things which are needed that most wont see, internal things to do with running the program. They take priority as running the program gets more involved as it grows. As we have very good tools (and some dirty hacks) for taking ADIF logs and converting them to and from SOTA CSV for Linux, Windows & Mac then direct ADIF support is not urgent but nice. Maybe it could be by the year end. Maybe. Or perhaps a bit later.

As for the ARMs, we have a new man in charge of checking ARMs and he is the man you should send them to. Jimmy M0HGY is the chap and his address is jimmyread AT hotmail.co.uk (fix the AT!).

Andy
MM0FMF

Andy
MM0FMF