[CQ-Contest] Logbook of the World as substitute for bureau QSLing

[Pete Smith]

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
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