Why do we need to import both ADIF and CBR?

Can we just skip ADIF and just import the Cabrillo file? Unfortunately - no. We cannot skip the ADIF alltogether in favor of just the CBR and these are the reasons why:

To answer this question, we need to understand what fields in our logbook software we use for contest logging. Any logger that adheres to the ADIF standard to store data (which should be everyone) should use the following fields for our sample contest (exchanging serial no, DOK and locator):

The problem is that loggers such as N1MM+ do provide the the first 4 fields, but not the last 2. Their rationale is that these would be redundant information, because the info is already provided in DOK and GRIDSQUARE separately. But neither does the ADIF informs us which of the provided fields are part of the contest exchange, nor in which order.

This is why the CBR import exists - in that format, we get told what the exchange was and which order it has to be in. So we import the CBR file to get that information and complete the data for wavelog to display.

Now the question from the start of this article was: "Why don't we skip the ADIF import alltogether and just import the CBR alone?"

The answer is simple. The CBR format provides only the bare minimum data to analyze a contest and is not "complete".

Lets compare! Here are 2 contacts in ADIF format (top left and top right) and in CBR format (below, starting with "QSO:"). Highlighted are (almost) identical information - the differences we will discuss below.

These are information that are present in ADIF, but not in CBR (at least not fully): - TIME: We only get hours and minutes in CBR, not seconds - MODE: We only get "PH" in CBR for phone/SSB. Some loggers even provide USB or LSB in their ADIF (N1MM+ does not) - MODE: the only valid modes in CBR are PH, FM, CW, RY (for RTTY) and DG (for every other digimode under the sun). Especially for DG, we would have no idea which mode was used if we just imported the CBR file - FREQ: We loose all information after full kHz, so "21.21344" gets shortened to "21.213" - FREQ: On bands starting with and above 6m, we loose the frequency alltogether, only getting generic markers such as "50" for 6m and "1.2G" for 23cm QSOs, even if we logged these correctly down to the last Hertz - OPERATOR: We get no operator on a per-QSO basis in CBR, only an overall list of operators in the CBR header - Exchange: While we see the complete contents of the exchange and all its parts in CBR (which we want), we do not get any info inside the CBR what this is. So using the CBR only, we would have no idea that "D23" is a DOK, for example.

Also, there is information which is NOT present in the ADIF, but included in the CBR: - Sent exchange: In the ADIF, we only have the sent serial number. The sent exchange of my DOK and Grid is never mentioned.

This is why we need a 2-step process:

First, import the ADIF to get the information into our log as fine-grained as possible, then use the CBR to get context information about what the exchange content and order was and fill in this missing information.

Only together (ADIF + CBR) we get the full, complete picture of everything that went down.