Peter,
Wow, 3122 counties. I used to run the Awards Count report (awardcnt) at each update and compare each update to the previous but didnt do that the last 10 or so updates. The last update that I did the comparison and it was correct at 3077 was v.9.20.08, that was sometime in July 2020. The next report I ran was in Dec 2020 after the v9.20.15 update and it showed 3122 counties, so somewhere between 9.20.09 and 9.20.15 was when it occurred. My guess is that the update 9.20.15 was the culprit as it had DXCC errors that were ultimately fixed under the same release. After cross-checking the county listing from MARAC I found the 45 discrepancies;
AK Alaska (5) entities but should be (4), there are (2) listed for District 4 and should be (1)
GA Georgia (160) entities but should be (159), there are (2) listed for Appling county, one misspelled as Applingg
VA Virginia (138) entities but should be (95), so (43) entities in error. Looks like most are dupes or misspelled counties, too many to go through one at a time but identified none-the-less.
Doing the math, the count of 3122 minus 45 (1 + 1 + 43) = 3077
Thanks for posting this, I probably wouldn't have noticed it for another 10 or more updates !!
73 de Brad, N8GLS
Update: After digging into the VA counties, it appears this has to do with the "Independent City" status in the Commonwealth of VA. There are 42 Independent Cities, apparently whenever that designation changes the old one is deleted, it looks like many of the CITY designations coexist with the non-city names, i.e., VA,BEDFORD and VA,BEDFORD CITY are both listed, VA, CHESAPEAK CITY and VA,CHESAPEAK CITY are the same but appear twice as the first one has a space added after the comma in VA and before CHESAPEAK, VA,FAIRFAX and VA,FAIRFAX CITY, many others making up the majority of the 45.
