Minimizing Marathon Points Lost to Busted or Disqualified QSOs
thanks to John K9EL and Mark WC3W
Suppose that early in the year, you work FR5DX, but QSB leaves you unsure of the callsign and he disappears before you can be ask him to repeat his callsign. Logging this QSO will record Marathon credit for the CQ country of Reunion Island and CQ zone 39. SpotCollector's Realtime Award Tracking for Marathon will stop highlighting active stations on Reunion and active stations in zone 39. Because the QSO was made early in the year, DXKeeper's Marathon Submission generator will likely include the FR5DX QSO in your submission for both Reunion and zone 39.
But if you really worked FG5DX rather than FR5DX, then you'll lose 2 points -- one for the country of Reunion, and one for zone 39.
To minimize the loss of Marathon points in such circumstances, DXKeeper provides Zone Risk and Country Risk items for each logged QSO in the Award panel on the Main window's Log QSOs tab. When you log a QSO, these items are empty, which means the QSO's risk is nominal. Set these two items to H (for high risk) in your FR5DX QSO, and
SpotCollector will continue to highlight active stations on Reunion and in zone 39 so you can seek a lower-risk QSO for this country and zone
- DXKeeper's Marathon Submission generator will only include include your FR5DX QSO for Reunion if you log no lower-risk alternative during the year
- DXKeeper's Marathon Submission generator will only include include your FR5DX QSO for zone 39 if you log no lower-risk alternative during the year
There are two primary reasons to set a QSO's Zone Risk and Country Risk items to H (high risk):
- you may not have correctly copied the callsign, as occurred in the scenario described above
- the CQ DX Marathon Award Manager has indicated that the callsign may not be valid for CQ DX Marathon, pending the submission or approval of required documentation
In contrast, a QSO that has been confirmed -- via QSL card, via an Authenticity Guaranteed member of eQSL.cc, via Club Log, via Logbook of the World, or via QRZ -- will be valid for Marathon unless there's a documentation problem. Such QSOs should be preferentially submitted for both their CQ country and their CQ zone. You could accomplish this by setting each confirmed QSO's Zone Risk and Country Risk items to L (for low risk), but you can instead simply check the Confirmed QSOs are low risk box in the Marathon Submission panel on the Configuration window's Awards tab. Doing so will lead DXKeeper's Marathon Submission Generator to preferentially submit these confirmed QSOs for their CQ countries and zones.
When generating a CQ DX Marathon Progress Report or Submission, DXKeeper identifies and reports QSOs whose Zone Risk items are set to Nominal but whose logged CQ zone is inconsistent information from the DXCC database, the USAP database, or the Override list; the Zone Risk items of these QSOs is demoted to to high risk.
Note that if you set a QSO's Zone Risk and Country Risk items to H because CQ is still awaiting documentation, DXKeeper's Marathon Submission generator will consider the QSO high risk even if it's confirmed and the Confirmed QSOs are low risk option is enabled. Only clearing the QSO's Zone Risk and Country Risk items would cause the Marathon Submission generator to consider the QSO to be low risk.
In the generated Progress and Submission reports, the following abbreviations are used to designate risk:
abbreviaton |
meaning |
H |
high risk |
N |
nominal risk |
L |
low risk |
Depressing the ALT key while clicking the Progress button in the CQ DX Marathon panel on the Main window's Check Progress tab will perform a callbook lookup of each callsign selected for a CQ country or CQ zone; any "callsign not found" results will be noted in the generated Progress Report so you can investigate further to determine whether the callsign was correctly copied and logged.
Additional Topics
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