At 02:57 PM 11/19/03 +0000, Bruce Sawyer wrote:
I am in complete agreement with K4IK, N4ZR, et. al. regarding the LoTW
successes. There have been a few rough edges getting this thing started,
but the program clearly receives close attention at ARRL and they are
smoothing out those rough edges as soon as they are identified. I think the
ARRL is doing a fantastic job with this program and we should all be
grateful for the hard work that has gone into it. I just checked this
morning and saw I passed the 10K mark on LoTW--with 150,754 QSO's submitted,
10,051 have now been confirmed. That's a potential 5 boxes of QSL cards
this program could have saved me! Thus it surely doesn't look to me that
the program is too complicated for hams to learn to use. I hope to be able
to put all my blank QSL cards in the recycling bin any day now!
Having started this thread, I feel a need to chime in here and disagree, at
least in part. I have received a lot of mail cautioning that many casual
contest participants are in it mainly for the QSL card, and not for awards
either, but for the pleasure of the cards themselves. I have no idea how
representative this is, but don't want to be the one to pull the plug. As
a consequence, I have decided to do at least one more batch of pre-emptive
DX QSLs via the bureau system, as before strictly limited to 1 per station
per band/mode combination since 12/1/94. I keep hoping that there'll be a
dramatic dropoff in the number that meet that standard, but so far it has
been gradual at best. I will continue to respond to domestic QSLs, as
before (which is to say, not quickly, but surely).
Maybe by next year this time LotW will have become so ubiquitous that
this'll no longer be necessary, but I confess I'm less sanguine about that
than I was before I asked the question.
73, Pete N4ZR
The World HF Contest Station Database was updated October 29.
2469 stations are listed -- 29 new and over 100 updated.
Are you current? www.pvrc.org/wcsd/wcsdsearch.htm
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