Practice Mode Details

You can interleave practice and normal logging with the same contest log. SkookumLogger keeps track of logged QSOs made in practice mode.

Disable After turns off practice mode after you have logged the specified number of QSOs with no errors. Subtract that number from the number of QSOs in the log to determine how many bad QSOs you logged. Setting the value to 0 disables this feature.

Allow logging incomplete QSOs when Logging preference to disallow in on overrides your setting for the Logging preference Refuse to log incomplete QSOs .

Separate properties are available for two radios. Radio 2 properties are not used unless the 2T2R Radio Configuration is active.

The Transmit Monitor properties affect the audio tone you hear when sending a message. The range of amplitudes is 0% to 100%. The range of pitches is 150 Hz to 1000 Hz.

The Receiver Noise properties affect additive white gaussian noise that is mixed into each radio’s audio when not transmitting. Amplitude is the level below maximum amplitude.

The Callers properties affect what you hear when listening to callers.

The Maximum property sets the number of callers in a fresh pileup. Disable Practice Mode to enable editing the maximums.

When a caller is created, speed, amplitude are defined for that caller by randomly choosing a value within half of the Spread value from the Center value. Pitch is also randomly determined. The Adjust pitch differences option ensures that the pitches for a set of callers are at least 40 Hz apart. The width of the simulated bandpass filter when tuning is proportional to the pitch spread setting.

When a caller is created, a call, a CQ response message and an exchange message are defined for that caller. The call is chosen randomly from the SCP database, which typically has more than 40000 calls. The CQ response is normally just the call; about 10% of the time it is the call repeated twice. The exchange message is determined as follows:

If the log has a received report entry field, the exchange begins with “5nn”.
When the log’s contest type is IARU HQ Championship or WRTC, 25% of the calls are drawn from an internal list of IARU HQ calls, and either an IARU HQ code or an ITU zone is appended to the exchange.
When the log’s contest type is RDXC, and the country of the call is UA, UA2 or UA9, the oblast for the call is appended to the exchange; otherwise a random serial number is appended to the exchange.
When the log’s contest type is ARRL DX and the entrant is outside K and VE, calls are drawn from a subset of the Partials database containing only K and VE stations, and the state/province for the call is appended to the exchange. “Inside” entrants can use this log type to practice copying states and provinces by setting Contest Call in New Log/Sent Exchange preferences to an “outside” call before creating a new practice log. When the entrant is inside K or VE, a randomly-selected power is appended to the exchange. The choice of powers randomly includes the cut-number representations A E N O T for the digits 1 5 9 0 0.
When the log’s contest name includes “All Asian”, a random two-digit number between 00 and 99 (representing age) is appended to the exchange.
When the log’s contest name is “North American QSO Party CW”, calls and exchanges are drawn from an internal exchange database.
When the log‘s contest name includes "Worked All Europe Outside Europe", calls are drawn from a subset of the Partials database containing only stations in WAE countries.
Otherwise, if the log has a Zone entry field, zone is appended to the exchange, using zone for the call from the Countries database, selecting CQ or ITU zone using the contest rules.
Otherwise, if the log has a Serial entry field, a random number between 1 and 1000 is appended to the exchange.
Otherwise, if the log has an Info entry field and the sent exchange is a zone, the caller’s zone is appended to the exchange.
Otherwise ‘DX’ is appended to the exchange.

Sometimes callers will ask you to repeat something, typically by sending a question mark or “NR”. Query Probability determines how often this happens for each kind of query, and Query Maximum Count determines the maximum number of times the same caller might ask. Set Query Maximum Count to 0 to prevent any queries.

Additional information is available in the About Practice Mode topic on the SkookumLogger Hints web page.