[SCCC] LotW question

Wed Jun 12 03:27:07 EDT 2024

Hi Paul,

Their lobbying efforts and the recent wins for the signal rate and HOA antennas were the top two items in my "Why I should stay column". I do hope that they can fix their problems and if even half the people who said they were done with them after the items Dick Norton brought to light actually do leave, I hope that will send the message through "5x9" and changes will happen. I'm happy to come back once the issues are fixed. I hope it happens sooner than later.

My pre-retirement life was in InfoSec and I used to meet with LA's Cyber Crimes Task Force a few times a year at conferences and such, as well as being part of InfraGard and a TLO for a major hospital chain, so I get the closed-lip aspect of ARRL's response, but I also know they could have said a little more without compromising anything. As it was, the fact that it was a cyber attack was leaked day one by someone at HQ to a friend of theirs who blasted it all over the "is lotw down" posts.

For me, my membership renewal notice arrived the day after the outages started. Had it arrived a couple of weeks earlier who knows. For now, I'll put the money towards other groups and my local clubs. It won't have the same impact, but our club does wonders for recruiting and training hams, so contributing the ARRL dues money towards that would also benefit ham radio by getting more people involved and interested in it... and using it!

I don't know if you've heard of "The Bored Net" out here in Ventura County or not. It's a club-agnostic group that gets together and does radio stuff each month. The monthly outings usually draw 10-20 people and 7-15 stations. They're putting on a "Micro Expo" in August and I think my dues money this year will go to them. No vendors, no sponsors, just hams doing radio stuff. Basic details here: http://www.theborednet.net/index.php/ham-radio-expo-to-be-held-on-august-31-2024/

And to answer your question, no you are not. Your "should I stay" column was just fuller than mine as a two-year member and only having caught the radio hobby bug three years ago or so. I've had work experiences which were way too similar to what was going on there, so that added extra weight to my "should I leave" column without anything good that was heavy enough to counter-balance it.

-73
Ryan, KI6BTY

On Tuesday, June 11th, 2024 at 11:41 PM, Paul Gacek <w6png at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Ryan
>
> It’s your prerogative to vote with your wallet.
>
> However, I will state the obvious that leadership teams change and at the end of the day the ARRL is the only ham radio advocacy group we have in the US. Compared to the RSGB in the UK, the ARRL seems to be quite effective and maybe that is the case relative to other organizations such as DARC etc.
>
> If the ARRL ceased to exist or were drawing so little from membership dues that they couldn’t represent us effectively, we are the losers. I hope generations behind me get to enjoy amateur radio if they so choose versus someone else having chosen for them that its an activity not worth offering in a modern world and have therefore auctioned off all our spectrum. Dire scenario but unfortunately history is full of dire scenarios coming true.
>
> The cyber attack is unfortunate and maybe in the fullness of time we will learn what happened and what the ARRL had done ahead of time to minimize/mitigate the impact. I would not wont to be in their shoes over the last few weeks.
>
> As to changing what’s included in our membership mid stream, it is indeed irritating and reflects badly on the decision makers judgment. With the stroke of a pen, things can be reversed.
>
> I renewed my membership recently. Maybe I’m a fool?
>
> Paul Gacek
>
>> On Jun 12, 2024, at 4:55 AM, Ryan Huggins <KI6BTY at pm.me> wrote:
>
>> 
>> Paul,
>>
>> The QRZ model is a double blind one, like ARRL's. That is why you can upload to ARRL from QRZ. Yes both flavors are good and there is plenty of room on the shelf for them both, I just find the level of protection to not justify the value of the item being protected and I do find it creates more barriers to entry, especially for those less technologically inclined. I don't find value in signing my call log on my phone systems, I don't see the value in signing a QSO. That's just me. Personally, I probably have the DXCC on arrl now. I was at 98 countries last year, but I was long past it on QRZ because more people in more countries were using that and not ARRL (afterall, the A stands for American so why should a Lithuanian use it?).
>>
>> But that's all ancillary for me. The main reason for me is the drama of the last year and their handling of this cyber attack put the final nail in the coffin. At this point, it just makes no sense for me to support their logbook service at this time. It's politics for me more than anything else. I do not like how the organization is being run and until changes happen, I'm voting with my money and data.
>>
>> -73
>> Ryan, KI6BTY
>>
>> On Tuesday, June 11th, 2024 at 7:19 PM, Paul J <paul.jenvey at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> The verification is actually what makes me *want* to use LoTW. It's a straightforward process and postcard verification is still much, much faster than waiting for direct cards in the mail from overseas, even more so the bureau. It really is the electronic version of paper QSLing, because of these things like the blind QSO confirmation mentioned above. LoTW is interchangeable with real, paper cards for real contacts in my book, and the other sites that have less than that level of verification, to me, do not provide the satisfaction of earning the 'real' DXCC award that people have been chasing since it's inception. Whether or not the league continues to run the service, it's only with a system of cryptographic signatures and validating one's station/license address that you can match the same level of verification that the manual paper card check process provided. I would be significantly less interested in DXing and awards if the only awards were based on the QRZ model, and there's no reason there cant be both flavors once the league or another service steps in to complete actual verification and ensure the validity of a 2024 DXCC is the of the same standard as a 1954 DXCC.
>>>
>>> -Paul W8GJK
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jun 11, 2024 at 6:54 PM Paul Gacek via SCCC <sccc at contesting.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Ryan
>>>>
>>>> What separates LoTW from the other systems you cataloged is everything you want to remove. The address verification, public/private key pair etc is to attempt to minimize “bogus” QSLs. ARRL is striving to ensure the two parties claiming to have a QSO have been vetted and it is really them uploading one half of a QSO. The blind aspect of QSO confirmation (I.e I don’t know who claims to have had a QSO with me until I upload a “matching” record) is good.
>>>>
>>>> Once again I rather like these approaches.
>>>>
>>>> As shared I’m not a big award chaser and don’t see the value in uploading to eQSL, QRZ but to each his own…..just like our elections!!
>>>>
>>>> Paul
>>>>
>>>>> On Jun 11, 2024, at 8:55 PM, Ryan Huggins <KI6BTY at pm.me> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> I'd love to see them modernize the system. Remove the postcard requirement (do we REALLY need address verification for QSOs????), have a sign-up process like every other site out there (create an account and you're good to go), and remove the need for tQSL and just allow the uploading of QSOs directly... like all the other sites do.
>>>>>
>>>>> After all the drama this past year though, my days of paying for anything ARRL are over for the foreseeable future. QRZ awards are instant, free, and show up nicely on my profile page. That's good enough for me. I'm heavily leaning towards not using logbook now. This outage has definitely shown me I can live without it.
>>>>>
>>>>> -73
>>>>> Ryan, KI6BTY
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tuesday, June 11th, 2024 at 12:31 PM, Paul Gacek <w6png at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I’d miss it and I’m a very modest award chaser.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I don’t mind paying for the awards as to me DXCC has some real value, is recognized and not necessarily an easy achievement for all.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Paul
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Jun 11, 2024, at 6:58 PM, Ryan Huggins KI6BTY at pm.me wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I'm just hoping they'll take this time to fix some of the problems and maybe modernize the system. I'm on QRZ, ClubLog, HRDLog, eQSL, and probably a few others. I'm not worried about LotW not coming back. It's relevance to my life was never there. I chase the QRZ achievements/awards instead of the ARRL ones because once you earn them, you get them. There is no cost to have someone review your entries and sign-off. It's all automated, free, and instant.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> -73
>>>>>>> Ryan, KI6BTY
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Tuesday, June 11th, 2024 at 10:08 AM, Paul Gacek w6png at yahoo.com wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Look on the bright side….it should come back. The alternative of it not has to be a small but real probability.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Paul
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> On Jun 11, 2024, at 5:55 PM, Ryan Huggins via SCCC sccc at contesting.com wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I imagine the longer that it's down, the backlog of QSOs to upload will grow considerably. I suspect we'll see processing delays greater than last year when that one guy upload 10 years worth of logs. As of this writing, I have 993 QSOs to send once it comes back online.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> -73
>>>>>>>>> Ryan, KI6BTY
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> On Monday, June 10th, 2024 at 9:14 PM, Bruce Horn bhorn at hornucopia.com wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Until the lotw.arrl.org server is back on line after the ARRL's cyber attack, we're unable to upload logs. It appears that the ARRL is not publicizing any expected dates for restoration of any of the affected services, but announces them once they're available.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> 73 de Bruce, WA7BNM (bhorn at hornucopia.com)
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>>>>>>>> From: "k6ll dave" k6ll.dave at gmail.com
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> To: "Phil Minch" ki4mug at gmail.com, "SCCC Reflector" sccc at contesting.com
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Sent: Monday, June 10, 2024 9:01:58 PM
>>>>>>>>>> Subject: Re: [SCCC] LotW question
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> I have several contest logs that I've been trying to upload for several
>>>>>>>>>> weeks. I try every few days, with no luck. I have submitted hundreds
>>>>>>>>>> of these in the past with no problem.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Dave Hachadorian, K6LL
>>>>>>>>>> Yuma, AZ
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> On 6/10/2024 7:09 PM, Phil Minch wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> I know that the LotW website is offline, but does TQSL still work to upload
>>>>>>>>>>> files? I tried it Saturday night and it looks like it worked. On Sunday
>>>>>>>>>>> night I attempted to upload the rest of my log from the VHF contest and got
>>>>>>>>>>> an error message. Tried again today and the message says those Q's have
>>>>>>>>>>> already been uploaded. That may be because the tq8 file for those was
>>>>>>>>>>> created already, but I don't know enough about the process.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> What have the other SCCCers found?
>>>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>>>>> SCCC mailing list
>>>>>>>>>>> SCCC at contesting.com
>>>>>>>>>>> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/sccc
>>>>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>>>>
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