[CQ-Contest] ARRL and Open Logs - Time for the next step?

[Pete Smith]

At 07:23 PM 7/29/2008, you wrote:
>If you drop the requirement that both stations participating in the QSO be
>LoTW members, then it's quite easy to impersonate another station or even
>make up a call sign. You say the impersonator would have to borrow someone
>else's LoTW certificate, but that's only the case if both stations must be
>LoTW members. If, as you say, only one should suffice, then the one who
>doesn't have to be an LoTW member can be an impersonator -- with ease.


Hi Dick - I guess I wasn't clear - if only one station in a given 
cross-checked QSO was a member of LOTW, then the QSO would go into that 
station's file just like a QSO with a non-LOTW-member that he uploaded in 
the usual way.  If neither one was a member, then it wouldn't go into the 
database at all.

This thread appears to have gotten hijacked into an endless wrangle on the 
merits of open logs, when my original idea was to suggest a way to promote 
both contesting and LOTW.  At least that's better than the recurrent 
wrangle over LOTW!

I don't really understand this intense worry over the sanctity of LOTW.  I 
have uploaded over 100,000 QSOs - it is *certain* that some part of those 
QSOs have call-sign errors, such that the QSO itself is bogus.  Of course, 
nobody knows which ones those were because of the way QSO matching is done, 
and that's a good thing.

I really wish that people would focus their attention on how it *could* 
work, rather than piling up hypotheses about why it won't, or 
shouldn't.  And if not this idea, how about some others?  Otherwise, 
contesting in the US will die with us greybeards.

73, Pete N4ZR