[CQ-Contest] Incomplete LoTW QSL Records, Worthless ???

[Pete Smith]

At 10:39 PM 2/4/04 -0500, R Johnson wrote:
>Here is a breakdown of my 108 bad QSL's:
>No Grid = 22
>No County = 2
>No County & Grid = 1
>No ITU Zone = 11
>No CQ Zone = 3
>No ITU & CQ Zones = 56
>No Grid & BOTH Zones = 5
>No Grid & ITU Zone = 8
>
>Note: I have no means (yet) of checking for missing IOTA data.
>
>So what is the bottom line ???
>
>I don't know, but as far as I can see these type of statistics tend to 
>make LoTW
>useless as far as being able to use LoTW QSL's for credit on awards other 
>than the
>ARRL DXCC, WAS and WAC Awards !!!

I wonder if this is really such a problem.  For example, I just received a 
bunch of confirmations from a TK (Corsica) station.  Surely, any interface 
between LotW and the CQ awards system, would be smart enough to know what 
CQ and ITU zones Corsica is in.  I grant you, there are some cases where 
the prefix doesn't tell you the zone, and it certainly doesn't tell you the 
grid, but the country.dat files we use do a pretty darned good job, and 
similar tables could be used, with somewhat more conservative rules, to 
guide decisions on whether to grant zone credit for a given QSO.

Why not wait and see how big a problem this *really* is?

73, Pete N4ZR
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