WCA - World Castle Award

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IW3HMH
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Re: WCA - World Castle Award

Post by IW3HMH »

Yes, it can load it. You can try on your log4om placing the file in the awards folder (settings / award folder)
Some fields are redundant because the activation has a hieararchy with "program" and "activations" childs, but sometime it's simpler to have in the child all informations to be easily managed without a hiearchical structure.
I can add an xml ignore command on those fields, but, again, it should work.

I'm working on a mixed environment with xml used to update single awards (download, share and so on), but with working informations stored in a db file
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Re: WCA - World Castle Award

Post by yt9tp »

I tried to load xml with removed empty and redundant fields and it seems to work fine. when i opened award in Award Manager it replaced missing data with data from header. That seems fine.
YT9TP, op. Pedja, QTH Uzice, Serbia, http://www.yt9tp.iz.rs
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Re: WCA - World Castle Award

Post by yt9tp »

Found another problem. I t seems there is a limit to fields contents length.

There is an item with activation code UR-00213 which ActivationCodeDescription is BOGORODITSKAYA (NOVOBOGORODITSKAYA) FORTRESS. This item is not available for selectio in award list for QSO. Instead cripled data is dislayed. As soon as I cut name to BOGORODITSKAYA FORTRESS it went ok.

What is exact limitation in number of characters?


Also I removed indentation in XML file and cut file length for 19 MB.

Significant reduction in XML size could be achieved if it is possible to shorten node names. They are quite long and take lot of space.


It seems there is a bug in Log4OM handling Note field. Neither if I export content in ActivationNote in XML nor if I manually enter value in Note for Award reference that information is not saved. it is lost as soon as I save Award Reference.
YT9TP, op. Pedja, QTH Uzice, Serbia, http://www.yt9tp.iz.rs
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Re: WCA - World Castle Award

Post by yt9tp »

I've spent lot of time too, and I do not want to leave it unfinished.

Also this is good way to learn how to create award files in general, and may be helpful for other that are planning to do so, since there is no other info.

And I will finally produce application that loads WCA Excell file and creates award file so it is easy to create updates.

I do not think it is about parentheses. There are number of other items that have parentheses and they are just fine.
YT9TP, op. Pedja, QTH Uzice, Serbia, http://www.yt9tp.iz.rs
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Re: WCA - World Castle Award

Post by IW3HMH »

i'll check the note field. Parenthesis should not be an issue. No limit size until we still work on serialized objects (32k limit...)
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Re: WCA - World Castle Award

Post by yt9tp »

I have resolved mapping prefixes to dxcc entities for all but these three:

3B
9M
UA

I do not know how to deal with them. Each of them cover several DXCC entities.
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Re: WCA - World Castle Award

Post by yt9tp »

I am thinking, this DXCC information actually creates problem of different kind. Log4OM uses DXCC information so it can narrow entries list to ones that match DXCC for the QSO call sign - to help user find proper entry.

But... there is no requirement that call sign should be related to WCA enties by DXCC. Anyone from anywhere in the world could go to any WCA location and activate it.

It seems to me that DXCC should not be be used for narrowing search unless users decides to use it. Other means of narrowing search should be provided (as we already discussed - by search option or filtering by country, group or subgroup , also, only if user decides to do so).

Until such interface is provided, it seems better to set DXCC for all entires to zero, so they are all visible to the user regardless of the call sign from QSO. Otherwise, if for example F station goes to DL and activates DL WCA location, it would be impossible to assign that QSL entry to such QSO, as Log4Om will odfer only F WCA locations for QSO with F station.

Any thoughts?
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Re: WCA - World Castle Award

Post by IW3HMH »

If you're from Serbia, and you're activating a castle in Italy, you callsign MUST be something like I3/YT9TP
With this callsign, Log4Om catch the correct country and loads italian castles (and other awards).

If you transmit with your "simple" callsign from Italy you're doing an abuse. So, based on that, the country is retrieved from the callsign used and awards are loaded accordingly.

Finally, having a listbox with 50.000 references can be REALLY slow (thinks about WFF program) :)
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Re: WCA - World Castle Award

Post by yt9tp »

IW3HMH wrote:If you're from Serbia, and you're activating a castle in Italy, you callsign MUST be something like I3/YT9TP
Right! Forgot about that.

It seems, then, that only issues left are those three prefixes that cannot be mapped to DXCC entities uniquely.
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Re: WCA - World Castle Award

Post by IW3HMH »

yup, this will be probably the only issue... anyway making big changes for 3 castles probably doesn't worth the effort at this time
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