DX Marathon 2024 Scoresheet Ready

I have good news to announce this evening. The scoresheet for 2024 that many have requested is now available on our website www.dxmarathon.com. Please see the details below, as well as information on our submission process, country list and information for software developers.

1- The Scoresheet

We’ve just released the 2024 version of the “Scoresheet” for Microsoft Excel. You can find it at https://dxmarathon.com/resources/software/ Please note that there are a few changes that we have made to further refine the Submission Tool from the 2023 version.

The Scoresheet is “no longer the official and preferred way to enter your submission.” It is instead “the preferred way to keep track of your DX Marathon progress” and we will continue to support it to that end.

As a tracking tool, it no longer requires any of the previous classifications or personal information. Its sole purpose is to collect the list of QSOs that you work during the year for each entity and zone.

Furthermore, it no longer requires a very specific and old file format. It instead will use the more modern XLSX format. We intend to build support on the Submission Tool to read spreadsheet formats directly from other apps, but at the very least, XLSX and CSV will be supported, and those are all easily exportable from any modern spreadsheet app.

Also, we will not require the scoresheet to be the same file we have previously provided to our participants. As long as there is a table with QSOs, and they include a column for the prefix, internal id, or entity name, as well as columns for month, day, time, mode, band, and call that will work. The specific order of the columns will not matter. We are trying to make this a very simple and flexible process for our participants.

So if you want to make a version with your Club logo on it and share it around, go for it! If you want to bring it to Google Docs – go for it. If you want to use Apple Numbers – that works too. If you want to use Open Office – have at it!

2- The Submission Tool

We have also updated the Submission Tool to start accepting data for 2024. You can send your submission right now. Even if you choose to not submit now, this can be a useful way to check your progress throughout the year.

The tool does not yet support the new scoresheet, but we’ll be working on that over the next few weeks. Once we complete this effort, we recommend you test to help us identify any problems with either our tool or the way you’ve modified your scoresheet. We want this to be as smooth as possible. If we identify any “bugs”, we will immediately correct them.

You can also now use the Submission Tool to review your submission for last year. We know that the XML file we produce to confirm your submission is not that easy to read in your computers, and we plan to improve on that this year, but for now, you can always go to the submission tool and open a past year XML file. Do note that this will replace any data you have loaded on the tool now, so perhaps download your current data first.

3- The Entity List

Now that we’re inviting people to change the worksheet as they see fit, it’s more important than ever to have a well defined list of entities for our participants to use. We’ve updated our “Resources” pages to include a more detailed “Entity List”. No new entities have been added and nothing has been removed, but we now list an “identifying prefix” for each entity, which is the most reliable way to refer to entities in your worksheets, since entity names can change, be spelled differently, or abbreviated

4- Other Data Formats

The submission tool now supports multiple types of data input: ADIF logs, with multiple QSOs or a single QSO per entity; Scoresheets, in either XSLX or CSV, with flexibility to the formatting, and our own XML format, which is what we use to officially capture your submission with all the details.

The Resources section on the website has included details about these data formats and we’ve now expanded it to include the scoresheet details, so we invite you, if you’re a software developer, to review that information at https://dxmarathon.com/resources/data-formats/ and give us your feedback.

That section also includes links to our JSON data files, which have for a long time included versions of our “Good Calls” and “Bad Calls” lists, so that application developers don’t need to scrape HTML pages. We also now include a JSON version of our entity list, including extended details that help match entities with other sources, such as LOTW and QRZ.com entity names, ClubLog prefixes and more.

Please reach out if you have any suggestions on how to improve these resources.