Awards Tracking FAQ

Here are some common questions and answers about LOGic's awards tracking facility.

QSOs for CW DXCC are invalid before Jan 1, 1975. I have QSOs before then. How do I handle this in LOGic?

Set CW up as a subaward for DXCC. The expression is

MODE="CW " AND QSO_DATE>={^1975-1-1}

I get many rejects with US counties. How come?

This occurs when logging counties from callbook databases.

The county info is obtained from the US Post Office, and is not actually a county list. It is a list of postal districts. It is close to a county list but not exact. The most notable example is Alaska, which has 4 counties, but many postal districts.

How do you resolve this problem? If you know the proper county, log it manually. If not, clear the county field. The Go To button on the Reconcile Rejects page of the Update Awards Progress Info form makes this very easy.

What does all the stuff in the summary of the Awards Progress List mean?

Please refer to the Awards Progress List picture in section 6.1 of the manual.

Here is an explanation of each row

TOTAL: There are 328 possible DXCC countries (at the time of the writing of the manual)

Worked: You have had QSOs with 30 different DXCC countries. This is not to say that you have had 30 QSOs. You could have had 1030 QSOs, but 1000 of them were with the USA.

Fulfilled (confirmed): You have QSL cards in hand from 10 different DXCC countries. LOGic knows this because you put an F in QSL Received. This is not to say that you have only 10 QSL cards in your collection. You could have 1010 cards, 1000 of them being from the same country.

Requested: You have requested QSLs for, but not received QSLs for, 15 different DXCC countries. You put an R in QSL Rcvd, in anticipation of receiving a card. Note that this is a tally of Requested, where no card has been Fulfilled for a given DXCC country. So if you have R and F for USA, it will count as F only. Requesting additional cards for this F country will not increase the R tally.

Worked, no QSL requested: There are 5 unconfirmed countries that you have worked, but have not requested a QSL for. QSL Rcvd is blank. Note that if you sum this 5, the 15 Requested, and the 10 Fulfilled, it sums to the 30 Worked.

Worked, unconfirmed: Of the 30 different countries worked, you have QSLs from only 10, so 20 are unconfirmed.

Unworked: You have never had a QSO with 298 of the 328 countries. Note that the difference is 30, which we have discussed.

Unconfirmed: You do not have QSL cards for 318 countries of the 328. Note that the difference of 10 is the number of cards you have.

What does the lists table do? How is it different than the prefix table? Where is the awards progress info stored?

Just as your car's owner's manual doesn't explain how an engine works, LOGic's manual doesn't explain the inner workings of awards tracking in any detail. However, some of you asked...!

The prefix table has nothing to do with awards tracking. All it does is automatically log the DXCC, CQZ, etc when you enter a QSO. You could erase all records from the prefix table and awards tracking would still work.

The Lists table has a list of all DXCC countries CQ Zones, US counties, etc. It also contains valid values for user-defined fields that may or may not be related to awards tracking. For example, you may enter club stations for the International Dandelion Society for awards tracking purposes. Or you may enter a list of the rigs you use merely so that they appear as a drop-down list on the log form.

The lists table also stores the awards progress. When you save a QSO or Update Awards Progress, LOGic looks at the QSL Rcvd for a QSO and then records in the Awards table the status for that entity--DXCC, CQZ, or whatever. You don't actually see this info on the Lists screen--it is used internally by LOGic. This internal awards tally information is displayed in human-readable format in the awards progress displays, as well as the All Band and Mode Awards Progress Report.

Items can be added to the lists table automatically. For example, if you track progress for grid squares, LOGic creates a new lists table entry for each new grid square you work. This is referred to as non-edited awards tracking. This is good because you can track IOTA without having to enter all possible IOTAs in the lists table first. The disadvantage of non-edited awards tracking is that you do not get a dropdown list of valid entities with descriptions on the log form, and awards tracking does not report the number of unworked entities.

Why do we call this system "non-edited awards tracking"? There is nothing to keep you from entering an invalid value in the log form. In the case of IOTA, it is desirable to purchase the optional IOTA list. PDA and RSGB could use the money. However, grid squares are tracked using non-edited tracking also. We could generate a list of all possible grid-squares and put in the lists table. However, it would be really HUGE, and you probably don't care how many gridsquares you have not worked.