I dabbled in multiple QSO Parties this past weekend (VT, MN, BC). Spurred on by mention on the recent Ham Radio WorkBench episode of both QP support and support for multiple activities during an operation, I tried using PoLo. I managed to log QSOs from all three events into the operation, but had to “add activity” and change the QSO party format each time I worked a different one. Looks like I will need to do the same to export, assuming that the underlying data has survived the switches.
Basic question is, was I missing something about how I should have handled a multi-activity op? Is this a limitation in the current QP support (which seems great otherwise), and is it something that is under consideration to solve? I can see some challenges but also opportunity since “their state” would let you sort which Q’s belong in which contest. Supporting in-state and out-of-state simultaneously might be more interesting but I know at least some of the overlapping events make the exchanges compatible.
Anyway, should I have created 3 operations and switched between them as needed? Or did I miss something else?
Addendum - exported logs three times, switching the active QP “activation” setting between exports. As a quick glance the Full and ADIF exports appear to be the same or at least to all have all the QSOs. The Cabrillo .log.txt files have the appropriate QP headers - they have all the QSOs in the log but will be easy to trim to the correct ones since the exchange info is only present for the relevant QSOs.
One of my dreams is having PoLo “properly” log multiple QSO Parties at the same time. There are some things we need to solve first, in order to manage the potential for different exchanges, and deciding which party is the right one for each QSO based on those exchanges, but believe me that it is a problem I definitely want to solve in an elegant way. It will just take some time.
Thanks Sebastian! I can imagine some difficulties in trying to “guess” which exchange is needed. I found the interface nicely simple and direct for each event individually, and I wouldn’t want you to step away from your focus on putting “just the right” information and entry fields in front of the user.
I also haven’t looked at how many QP’s actually overlap and have different exchanges. E.g. IN, DE, 7QP, and NEQP are all the same weekend, but IIRC you can keep a single log and submit it to all of them, they have code to sort out which contacts count for each event. They all use similar state/county exchanges though.