I was looking at the Winter Field Day template since it’s next weekend .
I’m not seeing a field for my call sign, only a club call sign, and no place to enter my power. I know that this is a 100 watt maximum event but I feel like I should be able to enter a power level if I am using less than that.
When I select “expanded mode” there is no change in the available fields so I’m guessing there are no additional fields unless my app is not behaving properly.
The Winter Field Day log is sufficient for logging your contacts and generating an ADIF file, but you will need to do some significant manipulations on the log to get it into Cabrillo format. For instance, power category, location, ARRL section, bonus points, etc. all end up being placed in the header of the Cabrillo file. See the example Cabrillo file here:
HAMRS won’t generate a Cabrillo and therefore you will need to use other conversion tools to move your log into the correct format, I did mine last year with a spreadsheet and concatenated a bunch of fields to create the Cabrillo file. I think there are some online utilities that will do some of this for you too but I haven’t used any of them.
The template uses “Club Callsign” but uses it to populate the Station Callsign field (the call sign used on the air), so just enter your own call sign in that field.
The final screen shot (tab) concatenates data from the previous tabs to generate the Cabrillo file. Yellow rows are ones I had to enter manually.
The log itself could be imported/copied from the HAMRS export if you wish. At this time last year I just entered my WFD QSOs directly into the log you see below.
If I use the WFD Log Submission form (from their website) will the Cabrillo format be satisfied? It looks like you add the ADIF to their submission form and it’s all good?
Unfortunately, no. You will need to do some editing on the ADIF to make it fit the fields as displayed in the example above. Also note the Cabrillo file is a pure text file, not CSV or similar format.
There are utilities available to generate the Cabrillo file from an ADIF, but you will need to play with them to figure out the best way to do it and comply with the expectations for WFD. I personally haven’t done this.
If the need is there and @Jarrett decides to eventually build full support for WFD, I imagine it would be possible to integrate a WFD template-specific context menu to export to a Cabrillo file that follows the required format. It would need some header data that would exist outside of the individual QSO records, however. For that matter, even exporting the headers with blanks and the QSOs in the right format would be a significant step. Just edit the headers with a text editor before submitting.
I can export a Cabrillo File pretty easily. It’s the calculating points thing and adding the various SOAPBOX(the heck?) items that I’m unsure of. I’ve never used Cabrillo files aside from the one time I did WFD in '20 when I got my license.
I’m not sure what other loggers do as far as calculating points, etc. or if HAMRS should provide the base Cabrillo file and then folks add the extra fields by hand?
The simplest approach, if you wanted to make this functional for the 2022 WFD (in 4 days!), would be to export the QSO records only as a text file and pop up a warning that the user will need to manually calculate the scores, add the bonus points, and fill in the remainder of the Cabrillo file manually including header and Soapbox entries.
The format for WFD is very specific though: all in chronological order, PH for all Phone modes (SSB, USB, LSB, FM), frequencies in kHz with no decimals, etc.
Otherwise recommend planning for next year and build something that generates the full format, calculates scores, etc. You would have to record header information that wouldn’t normally be incorporated into every row of the QSO to fully integrate the ability to export the full Cabrillo file.
I’m sure there are several of us who can advise on how to do that and run it through different test conditions.
I’m curious if anyone used HAMRS for the ARRL Field Day in June. I did, and copied/pasted my log into a spreadsheet to build my submission file.
Sorry for the delayed response, work has been horribly busy lately.
For me it is less about having the information for WFD submission and more about having the info available when I import it into my regular log.
Funny thing is if I enter a qso I don’t see these fields even with expanded mode on (expanded mode doesn’t seem to do anything) but when I go into the edit window they are there. If they are in the record shouldn’t I be able to put in the values like I can for a POTA activation?
I suppose I can add the values after the fact with ADIF Master or something. Exporting directly into cabrillo isn’t something that I would find value in. I like the app for being small, fast and not resource intensive. I’m afraid that putting the code in to do the score calculation, soapbox, etc. would increase the size and code complexity.
@Jarrett Here’s my attempt at a spreadsheet method for converting from ADIF to Cabrillo for Winter Field Day. It does the counting & calculations and generates the Cabrillo text needed for the WFD submission.
You might benefit from looking at the Score tab in particular to see how to calculate the scoring. The QSO list in the Cabrillo file itself isn’t too difficult to generate, but you do need to bin the modes into one of the three categories (CW, DI, or PH).
Love the spreadsheet. It worked perfectly when I imported my data as a test. (I had already imported my adif file into N3FJP to convert it to cabrillo.)
I do find that the more I have to manipulate data the greater the chance that I fat finger it and make an unintentional change that screws everything up.
I wonder if an excel macro could strip out pieces not needed and insert the rest into the right cells to avoid the Adif Master step completely. I have an Excel guru at work who plays with spreadsheets for fun. He might enjoy that challenge.
Even if he can’t, your spreadsheet is a very nice solution. Thank you for putting it together!
I could probably write some VB code to do this too but simply don’t have the time to spend on it. This is a bit of a “brute force” method but at least it works.
If your friend wants to take a stab at it, that would be great. I also thought of trying to write Python script but then that would require everyone to know how to use Python.
If HAMRS is meant to support portable contesting, then the best option is to spend some time developing the capability to score and export a Cabrillo file directly from HAMRS. The exports and scoring change from year to year, so version control would become important. But I do think this moving target could consume a tremendous amount of time to do it correctly.
Must admit I’m curious how others are converting their HAMRS logs to the WFD Cabrillo format, or how much use this template received this year.
