Topband: The USA-CA Awards

[Dave AA6YQ]

+ AA6YQ comments below

USA-CA, although a significant achievement, has very few applications, but many participants.
CQ is not investing in USA-CA. CQ spent money to add WAZ and WPX in LOTW.
CQ's other awards do not generate enough $$ to be invested into LOTW programming.

+ I don't know about LoTW support for WPX, as it was implemented before I became a member of the ARRL's LotW Committee in 2012.

+  In 2018, CQ did not pay the ARRL to add WAZ support to LoTW; each team did the required development work for their side of the implementation. If I recall correctly, the ARRL does receive a percentage of WAZ award credit fees.

+ At the time, the USA-CA award sponsor was supportive of adding USA-CA to LoTW, but after WAZ support was released ARRL management re-assigned the two LoTW developers that the ARRL Board of Directors had approved in 2013 to other projects: a second attempt at re-implementing the DXCC system (which failed, like the first attempt) and rolling out the Personify authentication system (which took 4 years, and now enables ARRL members to "donate, purchase and renew in a single transaction"). There have been no ARRL developers available to improve or extend LoTW since 2018; Rick K1MU has continued to improve TQSL, which is an open source project.

+ IOTA, JARL, and WIA acceptance of LoTW confirmations is accomplished independently of the ARRL - and with no revenue to the ARRL.

      73,

                Dave, AA6YQ