Tony, Paul wished that a non-contest station should be ’forced’ into contest mode instead of that info pop up window as in earlier versions. Non-contesters did not liked that functionality at all and instead only that informative pop up is now presented. As a result of that change it is proposed to have a button to switch between normal mode and current(?) contest mode.
You Tony as a nice person you want to give points to contesters, but you should know which contest is on-going as in many a log should be submitted otherwise the contester will get a NIL. The current supported contest types except NA and EU VHF ones are easy to identify by their CQ FD, RU and WW. NA and EU VHF do require two messages from the run station for contest identification. I recommend that a non-contester first invokes a valid contest before giving points to contesters, at least I would like it and welcome everybody to join. Even better is send log in, if that is required. The opposite situation that you are in a contest and a non-contester calls you is more complicated. Do I wish in first place answer to him, if I can identify that the message is not suitable for that contest. In FD and RU the first message tells that, but for other contests it is just a standard Call Call Locator. If I have answered, but get back a non-contest message, should I go in to normal mode or try to use Tab2 and manually make a normal call using it?
I have not tested, but Tab2 seems to offer a normal QSO possibility while you are in a contest mode. What then happens for logging could be an issue. By the way, if there were that button to flip between contest mode and normal mode, should those QSOs be logged into different log files or at least non-contest QSOs should not go into the contest log, if it will result a busted QSO, hi! A button is easy to propose, but how to deal with all side effects? I think that also the operator should do his job in exceptional situations.
