[MacLoggerContest] Musings on Contesting with MLDX

[Rich Seifert]

This weekend there was a veritable cornucopia of contests to enjoy. 
At times, conditions were such that I could hear and work stations 
participating simultaneously in the 7th Area QSO Party, Michigan QSO 
Party, Indiana QSO Party, New England QSO Party, and the Italian 
Amateur Radio Association DX Contest. I was not particularly 
concentrating on any particular event, but being an avid contester, I 
wanted to hand out points to folks in all of these contests.

As most people do, I open a new log when operating in a given 
contest, so that I can convert it to the appropriate format and 
submit it after the event. Operating in multiple contests this 
weekend, I found myself switching back and forth between logs. MLDX 
makes this relatively easy, by selecting a log from the "Open Recent 
Log..." menu item. (More on this later.) While I can't have multiple 
logs open simultaneously, I can switch among them with a single mouse 
stroke, which is perfectly OK.

However, different contests use different exchanges: State, 
State/County, Sequence Number/Region, etc. MLDX allows you to decide 
which log elements are included on the Contest Panel, but it does so 
only *once* for the entire program. The assumption is that you will 
set up the Preferences for a given contest, and leave them that way 
until that contest is over and you start another.

I don't know if it would be easy to do, or it if would go against the 
architecture of MLDX, but I wish that the Contest Panel preferences 
were associated with a given *log*, rather than with the program as a 
whole. That is, when I open a log, I wish the Contest Panel would 
reflect the parameters as I set them up for that contest: which 
fields are displayed, whether sequence number fields (or text fields) 
are to be incremented automatically, the state of the sequence number 
counter, etc. That way, when I switch from the New England QSO Party 
to the ARI DX Contest, the Contest Panel would go from showing 
Send/Receive Text Strings to Send Numeric/Receive Text/Receive 
Numeric, etc. Currently, each contest "context switch" requires 
resetting parameters in the Contest Preferences.

Similarly, I wish that the settings for Dupe matching (Band, Mode, 
Band/Mode) were similarly associated with the contest log, as some 
contests allow dupes in different band/modes, and others do not.

I know that MLDX is not designed as contesting software, but I wanted 
to put these ideas out there for consideration anyway. And if this is 
the sort of thing we are down to discussing, then must mean that all 
of the really important functionality in MLDX is already as good as 
it can be!

One additional point: It appears that when I create a new log, it 
does not show up in the "Open Recent Log..." list unless I exit MLDX 
and reopen the app. Not a big deal, but I would think that a 
newly-created log would show up as the most recent log in the menu 
list.

73 and Good DX de Rich, KE1B

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Rich Seifert                    Networks and Communications Consulting
rich at richseifert.com            21885 Bear Creek Way
(408) 395-5700                  Los Gatos, CA 95033
(408) 228-0803 FAX