Topband: LOTW Responses

[wa3mej at comcast.net]

I have been reading the responses to my previous post on LOTW and find some of them curiously interesting. First I am at a point in my life that I wont want any more clutter.  Second and more importantly I have made enough contacts over the years (46 come september) and sent a lot of cards that never elicited even the slightest response from the other station so I gave up on the idea. In fact currently I dont even have any.  And to be honest I have never been interested in WAS, WAZ, WAC, DXCC or any of the other awards... until recently. And of course I have lost many of the cards that I did get over the years from moves etc. But recently I thought about DXCC. 

After a false start with EQSL (which sucks because it isnt recogonized for any awards that I know of) I   stumbled on the LOTW site at ARRL.  This seemed like a natural to me because it directly supports the awards that I might be interested in. And so I bit the bullet and registered. It was painless, simple and it works great. If you have a problem there are support staff that can help even if in a minimalistic sort of way. The only problems I have had have been self inflicted and easily corrected. In fact I have had more problems with Logger32 than LOTW. 

Now I also said curiously interesting.. curious because I got the impression from one of the responders (that shall here-to-for remain nameless) sorta indicated that some DX stations were making money off of this gig. If this is so I did not know about that aspect and would find it another reason to be repulsed by card collecting. 

Also I kinda figured that some hams would be repulsed by the fact that it was the ARRL doing the LOTW thing and out of jealousy not want any part of it.  I guess that is called NIH syndrome or Not Invented Here. Thats ok because they are the losers for their attitudes and it doesnt bother me in the least. Again I say LOTW works and is painless. I am not an IT professioinal I am a techno geek to be sure but computers still eat my lunch occasionally and at 63 if I can learn new tricks so can others. In fact the day I stop learning the might as well plant me in  the ground! 

LOGGER32 is a nice program, highly configurable, stable and the author has done a yeomans job with it. The LOTW utillity I still have not gotten to work to where it logs on to the LOTW servers yet but maybe in time. Now if I can ever find all my old log books I will convert them. I guess they are with the QSL cards that I lost, I am sure no one would want to steal them so they gotta be around some where. 

One thing to consider however is that I dont know if the ARRL has considered what would happen if all of the hams in the world would join LOTW.  BOY what a massive back log processing those contacts! Even with a BEOWOLF cluster of say 100 processors it would take a good while with all the incoming logs...  

They say confession is good for the sole.. well is here is mine.  I have found myself giving preference to the stations that are LOTW users whenever possible.  I admit that this is pruely a selfish act in that I would like to get DXCC on 160 before I die.  


ANyhow guys thanks for the feedback it is appreciated. 



Jim WA3MEJ