Paul has offered to let me take over maintenance of the DX4WIN country file database (DX4WIN.CTY). Actually, I volunteered. As some of you may know, I have been maintaining the prefix files for CT/NA/TR/Writelog since 1994 (maybe earlier). So I have a lot of experience in this area.
For your information, the DX4WIN.CTY file contains a number of databases: - country - prefix to country - callsign to country - US state - US county - IOTA - QSL managers For the time being, I am concentrating just on the Callsign to Country mapping. ON4AOI has done an excellent job of maintaining the IOTA database, and I hope he will continue. The QSL manager database is a large can of worms, but I may get to it one day. The other databases don't change very often. One other change I plan to make is to use the official ARRL DXCC country prefixes. This should make the DX4WIN country listing match the order of the listing that the ARRL DXCC computer sends you. This will make cross-checking data a little easier. This should not adversely affect anyone other than seeing a different primary prefix for some countries (like Vietnam, Franz Josef Land, Antarctica, etc.). Here's how you can can help me -- I'd like to merge everyone's callsign exceptions into one master database and then release the new DX4WIN.CTY file. There are several ways we can accomplish this. The best way is to use the form on the DX4WIN web page for entering exceptions that are not in the default database: http://www.dx4win.com/Callsign_exceptions.htm The next best way is to merge your country database from 5.03 into 6.0x. Close your log, go to File -> Databases -> Countries, then select the Merge option from the menu, and point to the DX4WIN.CTY file in your 5.03 installation. When you merge the callsign exceptions, they will be listed in a window. Cut/paste the contents of this window and either enter the exceptions into the web form above, or E-mail them to me (not the reflector). The last way is just to attach your DX4WIN.CTY file to a mail message (to me, not the reflector). This is more work for me, however, since I have to extract all the data, and figure out which exceptions are unique. The more data I get, the better the database will be. I expect to have a new release in about a week, depending on how many responses I get. When finished, I will include instructions for merging the update, as well as checking your DXCC totals. My hope is that you will not LOSE any DXCC counters, but rather may pick up one or more. Thanks for your help in advance! 73 - Jim AD1C ===== Jim Reisert AD1C, 7 Charlemont Court, North Chelmsford, MA 01863 USA +978-251-9933, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, http://www.ad1c.com PGP Fingerprint: D8E2 3D78 339F A7F1 8C13 1193 B5D1 4FB6 79D1 70DC
