EXPANDED QSO LOGGING

By Paul R. Huff - N8XMS

When I was first licensed in 1970 as novice WNØBJC, the FCC still had a very stringent logging requirement for all transmissions that were made by a ham. Even an unanswered CQ or a series of CW test "V's" were supposed to be listed in the station log.

I still have my first logbook and every now and then I enjoy the memories that are refreshed in my mind by leafing through its pages. The writing is obviously adolescent, the spelling is poor, and most of the entries are listed with an incorrect date and time because as a kid I didn't really understand that a GMT time (now called UTC) also required a matching GMT date! With my ancient borrowed equipment, low random-wire antenna, and the limitation of only two 40-meter crystals, most of the lines in that log end with the comment "no contact made." But every now and then a successful QSO would be made and a new call sign from some "exotic" location like Cheyenne, Wyoming would find it's way onto the page.

Of course the FCC requirement for keeping a log was removed from the rules many years ago, but many of us still like to keep track of our QSO's with either a written logbook or one of the many commercial or freeware logging programs that are now available. For a while I used a simple Excel spreadsheet structure for my logging but eventually switched to a commercial product called LOGic, produced by Personal Database Applications in Auburn, GA.

Electronic logging just can't be beat for things like awards tracking, contest operating, and quick reviews of previous contacts with someone you are currently talking to. But the warm "humanity" of those old written logbooks is somehow lost in the computerized efficiency of the software.

I have always included little anecdotal comments in the pages of my logs, but an article in the Feb. 1996 issue of QST entitled "The W6VX Logs - An Autobiography", by Harvey Laidman, N6HL, inspired me to significantly expand my log's contents. In that article Harvey describes reading through the old logbooks of W6VX who, if I remember correctly, was an old-time operator and a silent key. Of course the logs are filled with QSO information, but W6VL also included things like schematic sketches of experimental circuits, weather and propagation reports, names of visitors to the shack, brief accounts of some of the events in his personal life, newspaper clippings, etc. This is exactly the sort of human-interest content that cannot be easily included in a computerized log.

So is it possible to have the best of both worlds? Is there someway to have the wonderful efficiency of the computer log and still keep the special features of a written log? Well, yes, and here is how I do it:

First, I do all of my initial logging on my computer during, and immediately after, the actual QSO. The computer is right at my operating position so all of the great tools that are a part of the logging software are just a few mouse-clicks away. Checking for a needed country on a particular band, or getting a quick reminder of a person's name from a previous QSO is thus almost instantaneous. Since there is an old saying in computers which says that "there are just two kinds of computer users - those who backup and those who wish that they had backed up." I frequently save a copy of my logging file on a separate floppy disk.

Then at the end of each month I print out a report of all of the QSO's for that month. Most programs have several different printed report formats that can be used. The software that I use allowed me to develop a custom report format that includes all of the information that I wanted and which prints it out in horizontal lines that look very similar to the lines in a traditional logbook. This report is then hole-punched and put into a three-ring binder.

But that's not all that goes into the binder. With the printed report serving as a heading for the month, I also put into the binder all of those "extra's" that can make a logbook something special. Here are a few examples of what can be found in between the QSO reports in my recent logbooks:

Perhaps the word "logbook"; is not really a very good description for all of this. It might be more accurate to call it my "radio diary". Typically more than a hundred pages like the ones listed above find there way into my radio diary over the course of a year. For me, a 1s just the right size for holding a years worth of records. Completed binders are labeled with the year and placed on a shelf for easy access.

I don't think that anyone will ever write a QST article entitled "The N8XMS Logs - An Autobiography", but the enjoyment that they have brought to me over the years is well worth the very minimal effort that it takes to make them. I would encourage you to do something along these lines as well.

73 and see you down the log.