[Dxspider-support] spot dat file format ....

[Dirk Koopman]

Jim

I can remember the effort that you made to make sense of and then 
automate the production of all the various formats of prefix file out 
there including wpxloc.raw (not a format that I would have chosen if I 
had been starting from scratch). But AFAIK ADIF apparently was mooted in 
1996 but not in general - in its current form - until later. By the time 
I came across it over here in the UK, DXSpider was up and running on 
wpxloc.raw which was still being maintained.

Having said all that, it would conceivably be possible to arrange for 
some automatic (one off) translation in my code - I have done similar 
things in the past afterall. But I am also aware that many cluster 
client logging programs now use the VE7CC format (pseudo PCxx) format 
for their logging and that has wpxloc country codes being passed as part 
of the spot data. So a change would be erm... difficult to erm... manage.

73 Dirk

On 01/02/2019 14:55, Jim Reisert AD1C wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 30, 2019 at 4:06 PM Dirk Koopman wrote:
>
>> So the PacketCluster master prefix list was the only place where this occurred.
>> By default then, this is why Jim Reisert AD1C continues (painstakingly) maintaining this file.
> Dirk, the credit goes mostly to my software.  It's no extra work on my
> part.  The last substantive changes made to the "WPXLOC" part of the
> software occurred in August 2014.  As long as it keeps working, I have
> no incentive to touch it.  It's done for backward compatibility with
> DX spots made back in the very first days of DX Spider.
>
> In fact, as new DXCC entities are added, the WPXLOC country number
> simply increments from the last one assigned.  I did not bother to
> make them match the ADIF country ID.  In hindsight, that might have
> been a good idea.  However, it could have lead to confusion, because
> some would match and others would not.  My recollection is that there
> are a couple/few that actually do match, but that's just a
> coincidence.
>
> prefix (ADIF) => (WPXLOC)
>
> PJ5 (519) => 355
> PJ4  (520) => 356
> Z8 (521) => 356
>
> 73 - Jim AD1C
>