Thanks for the info, Jim. You have always been very prompt in providing CTY file updates, even with this one for FJ, especially considering your recent move, it being the Holiday Season, and the amount you are paid for your hard work.
I, for one, knew that you would be putting out a new CTY file in short order and reading of the problems others were having decided to wait until I had your expert update. I didn't see any real rush to change things. I knew what bands I had worked them on and what bands I needed. The only reason I could see to rush to update the CTY file is if someone was ready to send their cards in to the ARRL or attend a ARRL Convention where cards would be checked to assure they got credit for the new country. Even then, they wouldn't really need the new CTY file to have recent FJ contacts count as a new country. So, as the saying goes, haste makes waste. IOTA: One thing I find interesting about FJ becoming a separate country is how the RSGB IOTA people are going to handle it. St. Barts (FJ) is IOTA NA-146, St. Martin (FS) is IOTA NA-105. It appears DX4WIN automatically assigned NA-105 to FS which included St. Barts. After I did the CTY file update I find my only contacts with NA-146 (ST. Barts) are the new FJ/OH2AM and FJ5KH contacts. That means I need to pull out all my FS QSL's and check if the address info shown on the card is St. Barts or St. Martins. I usually look for an IOTA number on the QSL's as I log them in as being received to be sure DX4WIN has the IOTA number correct but not all cards show the IOTA number on them. Thanks again Jim for your hard work. Enjoy (HI!) the snow there in CO. _______________________________________________________ Alan Zack Amateur Radio Station K7ACZ ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Reisert AD1C" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2007 1:39 PM Subject: [Dx4win] New application note: Adding a New Entity Hi Folks, First a couple of comments about the recent problems. If you want to skip the comments, skip the next few paragraphs for the URL of the new application note. First of all, I was on vacation when FJ was added to the DXCC Entity list, otherwise I would have released the country file sooner. However, while not straightforward, I believe that it is possible to successfully edit the country file and not cause data corruption. Second, I work with raw country file data in text format outside the DX4WIN program. I have a special utility that Paul wrote to generate DX4WIN.CTY from this raw data. So my method of editing country file data is much different than what a user would do. I'm sorry if people suffered data corruption while editing their country files. I can't say specifically what caused the problems, but what appeared to happen is that the addition of "FJ" pushed all the subsequent entities down by one, thus linking United States to "JZ0" instead of "K". Since JZ0 doesn't have states, state data in the logbook may have been lost. I can only see this as being a problem if the logbook is OPEN while editing the country file, but DX4WIN does not let you edit the country database unless the logbook is closed. Again, this is just a theory, and I can't actually explain what happened. I hope this unfortunate incident has impressed on you the need for regular backups. I have previously written a long application note on DX4WIN backup strategies, and I suggest you read it again: http://dx4win.ad1c.us/appnotes/backup.htm Unfortunately, this is like closing the barn door after the horse escapes. If you have upgraded from another DX4WIN version in the past, it's possible that you can recover some of your missing/corrupted logbook data from an earlier installation of the program (look at the dates of your old .DXL files). Note that there is a known import bug 7.03 which caused imported QSOs in the DX4WIN# (.DXQ) format to all be marked as Invalid. There is no multiple QSO operation to change these QSOs to invalid, however. Paul is aware of the problem and it should be fixed in the next version. Today, I have written the following application note describing how to add a new entity: http://dx4win.ad1c.us/appnotes/entity.htm I would appreciate if a few people could apply these instructions to the *previous* country file (that does not contain FJ) that you can download from: http://www.country-files.com/dx4win/download/DX4WCTY_20071211.zip and let me (or the reflector) know of their experiences (i.e. did I leave out any crucial steps?). I empathize with those of you who lost data, but there's not much I can do to help you recover it. Read the backup application note; there's a chance that you may find one of DX4WIN's internal log backups from before you made the country file change. Or you might have a log from an earlier version of DX4WIN that you can use to help restore the missing data. If you have any questions, please reply to the reflector. 73 - Jim AD1C -- Jim Reisert AD1C/?, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, http://www.ad1c.us _______________________________________________
