[MiQP-Mail] MiQP 2013 - Submit Your Log

[David Pruett]

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** The 2013 MiQP Is Now History **

** It Is Time To Submit Your Log **

The 2013 Michigan QSO Party last weekend experienced excellent 
conditions and activity.  Within a week of the contest, over 200 logs 
had already been submitted. Now would be a great time to submit YOUR 
2013 MiQP log prior to the *May 20, 2013* log deadline.

These days, most of us use our computers to log our contest activity, 
and simply e-mail our log file to the contest sponsors.  While paper 
MiQP logs will always be accepted, electronic logs allow us to check and 
score MiQP much more accurately in less time and effort.  But 
participants sometimes make errors with their e-mailed entries, and 
unraveling these errors to achieve a fair and accurate log checking 
result consumes a tremendous amount of effort on the part of the log 
checkers (and in some cases, we can't correct these errors by ourselves).

Beginning in 2012, MiQP instituted an improved process for submitting 
electronic logs: the *MiQP Log Submission Page*.  Instead of e-mailing a 
log, the MiQP entrant goes to this page, types in the callsign they used 
during the contest and e-mail address, then selects their contest 
category, operating location, and club name from drop down lists, 
browses to find their log file on their computer and finally presses an 
on-screen button to submit their log.

The web page automatically scans the submitted log, checking that all 
the necessary information is present and seems correct, then performs a 
quick scoring check of the log.  If the log has problems the entrant is 
informed that the log was not accepted and is shown suggestions how to 
correct the errors. If there are no problems, the log is saved, the 
entrant is shown the results of the quick scoring check, a confirmation 
e-mail is automatically sent to the entrant and the entry is 
automatically added to the "Logs Received" page on the web site.

*Beginning with the 2014 MiQP, the Log Submission Page will be the only 
method for submitting electronic MiQP logs.*  As always, paper logs will 
continue to be accepted, and the MiQP log checking staff will continue 
to be available via e-mail to assist entrants having difficulty 
correcting and submitting their logs.

It has been asked why we created this web page to accept logs?  The main 
reason is that it allows us to inform the entrant of problems with their 
log immediately, not days or weeks later when the log checkers get 
around to working on it. In 2012, an entrant sent in a nice log with 159 
QSOs, however all but one QSO had a received QSO number of "00", which 
is invalid.  Presuming this to be an error with his logging program, we 
sent the entrant an e-mail informing him of the problem and inviting him 
to submit a corrected log.  The entrant never followed up, and so his 
final 2012 MiQP score was based only on the one valid QSO.

Secondary benefits of the Log Submission page are that it relieves the 
log checking team of a lot of tedious, manual handling of the received 
entries, and allows the entrant to receive better, quicker feedback 
concerning their entry.

So, *PLEASE USE THE LOG SUBMISSION PAGE FOR YOUR 2013 MiQP ENTRY*.  The 
link to this page can be found to the upper left of the main MiQP web 
page screen, under "Contents", "2013 Submit Log".  If you have 
difficulties using the page, drop an e-mail to the log checking staff at 
logs at miqp.org <mailto:logs at miqp.org>.

Finally, two brief caveats to using the Log Submission page. First, the 
score summary that it reports is only a rough check that the data in the 
log is realistic, it is not the final log checking result and score.  
While it accurately counts duplicate QSOs, it doesn't recognize 
non-official multiplier abbreviations (ex: "Ohio" instead of "OH").  The 
official log checking goes to much greater lengths to identify 
non-official abbreviations and the final score will be accurate.

Second, if you cannot find your club name in the pull down box, simply 
choose "N/A" and we'll use the actual club name from the file.  We try 
very hard to ensure the list reflects clubs which historically are 
active in MiQP, however there are always clubs showing up for the first 
time.  If your club is not on the list, make sure we can correctly 
identify the club name in your file.  Don't use abbreviations or 
acronyms for your local clubs which we are likely not familiar with.

73,

MiQP Organizing Committee