[Tlf-devel] Stew Perry Topband Challenge (was: tlf-0.9.11)

[Wilbert Knol]

Hi Jim,

I had a quick play with logcfg.dat and the Stew Perry rules file last 
night, and I have TLF all ready to go.

It goes like this. Someone calls me. I type the callsign an hit F3. 
TLF sends 5NNRE78. I hit TAB and the cursor pops across into the 
exchange field. I take down the grid square and hit F4. TLF sends 'TU 
ZL2BSJ'. I hit ENTER and it logs the QSO.

I started off with the template rules file in 
/usr/local/share/tlf/rules
..and culled most of it. It has only a 3 or so lines in it.
(RECALL_MULTS, ONE_QSOPOINT, CONTEST=stew-perry and another minor 
thing). 

In fact, you don't actually *need* a rules file for this one. TLF has 
no way of calculating the correct points/QSO according to grid square 
separation. 

So I just log them all as single pointers and let the contest manager 
score the log.

In my view, the rules file should *only* have those things relate to 
the contest, such as scoring rules. It should not even have anything 
user-specific in it.

Anything else should go in logcfg.dat. I have system-wide rules files 
and in my home directory, I have a tree of contests with per-contest 
logcfg.dat files that define the CW messages.

> I'll keep tweaking the rules file.  I didn't have a
> serial number field in the file, neither did I have
> points, but it certainly wants to assign points for
> every QSO.

Correct. It will score QSOs according to some default. Just ignore it.

>  I may just run it in QSO mode if I can get
> around the problem below.

I run in CONTEST mode, and also in CT Mode as I dislike the S&P and 
RUN mode business. Maybe CT compatibility mode will cure the 
ENTER-ENTER problem you described.

> That would help, but I'm running rigs that are too old
> for that kind of control.  ;-)

OK..fair enough. Incidentally: my IC725 is at least 18 years old. Must 
have been one of the first rigs with computer control.
I don't know how you force TLF to start up on a particular band. I 
would have thought that, if there is no rig control, TLF 'remembers' 
the last band when you restart the program.

You should run up TLF and type
:INFO
to make sure the corerct log file and rules file are being used.

You can also start up TLF with the -v option to watch what it uses.

> Anything in the logcfg.dat or rules file that I could
> tweak?

Sorry: I forgot the bring in copies of my logcfg.dat and rules files.
Will try to do so in a few hrs && drop you a mail.

Wilbert.

PS: Will CC this to tlf-devel, in case it is of interest to others.

Wilbert.