Add IARU call history file

[K6OK]

Upload call history file from 2021 public logs

[w7sst]

That was fast. Thank you.
I'm wondering if we should increase the percentage of IARU-related callsigns so the user can practice copying the Society exchange rather than ITU-Zone numbers?

Also, it looks like you did not include all the original Society calls/exchanges from the original file I had uploaded. If it's okay with you, I can merge the two files and re-sort them and update the comment at the top.

Also, we could change the logic of finding callsigns to find a higher percentage of Society calls. The original file I posted had 159 society calls. Assuming I added all of these to your file, we would have 160/3600 = ~4.4% Society calls. If I'm trying to practice for IARU, I'd like to see a higher percentage of Society calls. If I want to practice Zone numbers, other contests will let me do that.

So wondering if we should reduce the number of ITU-Zone calls, to raise the percentage. Or, I can change logic to return a higher percentage of Society calls.

Thoughts?

[w7sst]

@K6OK - I changed the merge base to my iaru-hf-contest branch. This branch will also let you run the IARU HF Contest.

[K6OK]

That was fast.

Not hard with a spreadsheet and Notepad++ :-)

I'm wondering if we should increase the percentage of IARU-related callsigns

Thinking about this from a big picture standpoint, I think the simplest and most straightforward policy should be all call history files should be unaltered derivations from public logs. I did this by selecting top score logs from NA, EU and JA, merging them then removing duplicates. It's a global-neutral approach. Keeps it simple for maintainers in the years ahead.

I learned from CQ WW that the only way to get a fully accurate simulation of what I'm going to hear is by making a custom CH file from nearby public logs. What West NA hears is very different from East NA, EU, JA, VK, etc. Even within EU what EA hears is different than what SM hears. Due to this wide-ranging regional variability I think we need to put it on the advanced user to make up their own CH files if they want to. Too many variations of regions and contests for us to manage it.

Later on consider supporting a Settings dialog that allows the user to swap CH files along with help documentation that describes the format and how to do it. If we end up supporting that we shouldn't alter the callsign mix in the program as that will interfere with the user's custom CH mixes. -- Jim K6OK

[w7sst]

I like the idea of selectable history files. I like your approach of combining the top logs from the different regions. Perhaps we can merge in the list of the society-only calls (or append it at the end with a separate title and remove duplicates). This will capture all known Society calls and still capture the global merge top-call logs.

[w7sst]

We could also provide additional a directory of additional files (perhaps by region IARU_HF_NA.txt, IARU_HF_JA.txt, IARU_HF_EU.txt, IARU_HF_SOCIETY_ONLY.txt, etc.) and provide instructions for updating the IARU_HF.txt file in the main runtime directory. This will allow users to copy in the file they want to use. We could do this until we get the Settings Dialog in place.

I think for now I'd like to append the society file to the end of your file with a clear comment of what I have done. I'll update the reader to remove any duplicates (which may be good anyway in case users are modifying their own files).

[K6OK]

OK -- sounds good! I ran IARU to do some cursory checking, seems to run fine.