Logbook of the World (LOTW)
LOTW has turned out to be a great resource IMO after many months of using it, my paper DXCC is linked to my LOTW account and I can see QSL's from contacts made decades ago, and I have my current ARRL standings on DXCC and WAS by mixed, or all modes and all bands only a mouse click away, but don't misplace those original QSL's!! Since on the mixed DXCC they failed to log the call sign or mode of the QSO, not even the QSO's time and date, like this:
| Worked Station | ||
| Worked | 5A | |
| DXCC | LIBYA (436) | |
| Date | 1986-11-05 | |
| Mode | UNKNOWN | |
| Band | UNKNOWN | |
And this
| Worked Station | ||
| Worked | 7P | |
| DXCC | LESOTHO (432) | |
| Date | 1986-11-05 | |
| Mode | UNKNOWN | |
| Band | UNKNOWN | |
So these QSL's, if the cards are lost, are worthless to you for a future mode or band DXCC credit!!
Currently I am seeing about 1 out of every 9 QSO's confirmed by LOTW, and I was mistaken, I thought US hams had to be ARRL members but someone pointed out to me that you do not have to be a member of the ARRL so that's all the more reason to sign up. (although the QST magazine alone is well worth the dues and we ALL should support the ARRL!!!) DX stations only have to send in a copy of their ticket to get on, US stations have to send in the cert request and wait for a postcard to come to the address on their ticket. That process only took about 1 week in my case. After using it for an extended time, I reverse my original statement that the credits were too expensive. Considering the cost of international postage and the green stamps, and the time it saves, it's a real bargain, I bought 100 credits for 20 dollars and put 23 new countries on my DXCC for the regular $10 application fee. When I saw I had 180 confirmed from 1986 and 23 new electronic ones I just had to get over the 200 mark!! And I did it without mailing bulky cards and having to wait weeks. I have 77 credits I am sitting on while I work WAS on RTTY :-) If I had QSLed those same 23 countries via snail mail, even without sending a green stamp it would have cost over 20 dollars when you figure in the cost of International Postage, QSL's and envelopes and more importantly your TIME running back and forth to the PO Box!! And on some you would not have gotten a return without a green stamp. Plus I still have 77 more credits. So I actually only paid about 5 dollars for 23 countries confirmed! One thing I do like is the way they apply the credits, they apply the rarest QSO if you have several QSL's for one country, for instance if you have the UK on 40 20 and 6 meters, they will select the 6 meter QSO for your DXCC when you file the application. You can change that if wanted, but I found they always selected the QSO's I would most prefer when I had more than one QSL for a particular country.
To use LOTW you'll have to use Trusted QSL 1.1 to sign log exports from your logging program, or have a built-in LOTW manager in your logging program that works in conjunction with Trusted QSL, The Winlog LOTW Manager is superb, pretty much foolproof, I downloaded my 1st report from LOTW and ran it on Winlog and it marked 500 plus QSO's as confirmed and no errors, pretty slick.
I encourage you to get with the times, it doesn't cost you anything to upload your logs and you could be confirming a country, county or state for someone (it doesn't cost you if someone confirms you for a QSL, and you don't get any kind of credit if someone else pays to add your QSL to an award) , when I work something I need I always run a call search on LOTW and it is nice when you see they are active! That's one you know you have confirmed! My fastest turn-around for a QSL is about 5 minutes, I worked a station in Belgium on RTTY, and as soon as we signed, I updated LOTW, and he did just happen to do the same, as soon as I uploaded the file there was his QSL!! I have around 5500 QSO's in there, many guys have 10's of thousands, but with only a few thousand Q's I have noticed some people only update monthly and some every few months if not more, so whether I am very active or so-so active I seem to get a QSL about every other day at least. I just got one today for a QSO in Jan of this year. If you've worked me since 2001 you are sure to have at least one QSL waiting for you!
Using it and getting on.
You will need to install the Trusted QSL ver 1.1 software (available on the site), this will generate a cert request, you then can upload it on the site or email it to the ARRL, use the site to upload, so many ISP's are scanning mail I doubt it would get thru unless you zipped it up. In about 1 week you will get a postcard from the ARRL. Go to the site and enter the number on the postcard and viola! You are in. Be sure and save the postcard!! When the time comes to renew your certificate that postcard will make the process instant instead of having to be "re-confirmed". You can then sign your log with the Trusted QSL program (you MUST sign it or it won't work) The LOTW site said they were having problems with people sending the entire log every time they updated, this causes a lot of un-needed load on the servers, once you have done your initial log upload, only export and sign the new QSO's from then on, if you have a bad memory like me, just look under QSO's on the LOTW and it will show the last one you uploaded, simply export from that point forward.
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