3 Comments

I have a good friend who still logs on paper. I’ve been trying to convert him to electronic logging, but in the meantime I have been able to convince him to submit his logs by converting them with the application available at http://b4h.net/cabforms/. That’s a bit easier for him than installing something on his PC, plus he can do it from his machine at work during downtime since he can’t install software there at all. It’s a shame that more folks aren’t aware of these options.

The most frustrating thing about radio contesting is the long delay between the competition and the announced results. I can think of no other sport where the wait is so long. Imagine if the results of the Superbowl weren’t known until June… one of these days, contests really should think about saying ‘no’ to paper logs. Computers are ubiquitous worldwide now; you don’t need broadband, just a modem to send a text file. Maybe if they said no to paper logs the results could be compiled faster.

Jim – I too think the time is much greater then it needs to be but maybe we need to keep in the back of our minds, people outside the US. They might not have a computer, or they might be traveling or in a remote area and it could possibly be weeks before they are able to truly submit a log. I know most of those that run contests want as many as logs as possible but maybe we need to reduce the lag between the end of the content and submissions.

Also from following Randy’s blog and posts to Twitter/Facebook, even after all the logs are in electronic data, there is a lot of time/effort to clean them up, match QSOs up, etc. I don’t see any reason it can’t go from about 1 year to maybe 6 months. That of course doesn’t mean much as I don’t have any influence on how long it takes for any contest.