[CQ-Contest] Growing New Contesters with LOTW - suddenly it's 1977again

[Michael Keane K1MK]

At 11:08 AM 5/27/2008, Pete Smith wrote:
>how hard can it be to put that data in a format that LOTW can 
>accept, and for LOTW to enter it in its database just like any other 
>data transfer from another trusted server?

Well it's never quite that simple....

As LoTW has been set up, no one in Newington or elsewhere can create 
or modify N4ZR's QSOs in LoTW other than N4ZR; and each of N4ZR's 
QSOs in LoTW can be traced back to N4ZR.

Changing that aspect of LoTW is not a technical matter. It's a 
substantial policy shift, somewhat more than a little goodwill.

If LoTW was to accept contacts that would be untraceable beyond the 
contest sponsor, there'd be nothing at all to prevent agent 
provocateurs from simply pirating callsigns, making some contacts and 
then sending in a log.

In contesting we live with wide open, unverified systems like the 
robots. And no one has zero'd out the competitions' entries at the 
submission deadline... yet. That's a good thing. Even if someone 
vandalized a contest like that that, contests are ephemeral; DXCC is 
forever. :-)

Having built LoTW, I doubt the ARRL would be willing to open up these 
kinds of vulnerability for DXCC.

73,
Mike K1MK

Michael Keane K1MK
k1mk at alum.mit.edu