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

[Ron Notarius W3WN]

OK, maybe I'm slow on the uptake today since I'm still recovering from the
kid's wedding...

But I still don't get it.

You're done with the contest.  You send one email to the contest sponsor,
whomever it is, with your Cabrillo file.

Assuming that you're already signed up for LotW, you then take your Cabrillo
file, encrypt it, and upload or email it to the LotW server.

Done.

What's so hard about that?
-----------------
We went through about 2 or 3 weeks of belly-aching recently about how the
use of computer technology is so rampant today, that some feel most contests
should mandate an electronic log upload/submission within an hour of the
contest's ending.  Yet now we're complaining that sending a second email is
so difficult?

I would further submit that, many contesters who (for whatever reason(s),
right or wrong; good, bad,or indifferent; or somewhere in between) would
resist submitting a contest log to a given contest or contest sponsor if a
mandatory simultaneous LotW upload was imposed, or that their logs would
automatically be uploaded to LotW at some point whether they wanted to or
not.  I would certainly hesitate on this on principle, and I'm a strong
supporter of LotW!

In short, I think our time is better served promoting LotW and countering
some of the wild and misleading statements about how "hard" it is for most
hams under most circumstances; rather than pushing something else that the
contest world isn't ready for, and something else that can backfire on the
wrong people or organizations, and for the wrong reasons.

73

-----Original Message-----
From: cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com
[mailto:cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com]On Behalf Of kl7ra
Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2008 12:47 PM
To: cq-contest at contesting.com
Subject: [CQ-Contest] Growing New Contesters with LOTW - suddenly it's
1977again


Pete mentions logs that were submitted for contest credit could
be used for award credit as was done many years ago. The
problem is LoTW has many steps or hoops that may be a show
stopper as it is right now. It has also been my experience working
with local Dxers that some think using LoTW seems too difficult to
mess with.

I assume some contesters like myself  submit our contest log to the
log robot, do the dance, then wait until after the log submission
date, (or not) to sign this log and upload or e-mail it to LoTW.
After awhile a low percentage of the Q's gets 'QSLed' and you
can watch your WAS awards, for example, fill in. Slowly.

We are very lucky we have really smart computer people
checking our logs. I know there has to be one person in the
system that could make all this work for log transfers. The
question is are two logs sent in for cross-checking equal to
one certificate signed log? Could the signing step be skipped
for contest logs?

In the next perfect contest world we will upload our log to the
Robot, maybe within some short window this time and all Q's
will be cross-checked and scored. Then this "clean" log will
be piped to LoTW for "all" awards and the master log archive.
The final scores will be sent to the contest sponsors web site
so we can go there to claim any certificate we may have won
for instant downloading.

I have faith in the system. Using the present contest log checking
software/techniques for super clean logs piped to LoTW can only
improve the awards program not to mention more people getting
in contests knowing they can confirm every QSO.

Strong work Pete.

73, Rich KL7RA  Kenai


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