RSGB: Gender-Washing

A Mastodon bot account that gathers information about amateur radio published an interesting link to a RSGB page this morning.

I don't get much information about the RSGB these days, as I've long ceased being a member; this rather gives the lie to the constant claims made by the RSGB that they are 'out there', in the media, advocating for the hobby. Only two RSGB-related news results come up in a search online - one dating to 5 years ago, the other 12 years.

Anyhow, the link proved to be to a New Scientist-style, Q&A interview with an accomplished female engineer. This is good to see, because I've been pointing out for years how the RSGB has a truly monumental problem with gender balance in its representation of the hobby. Here's objective, numerical evidence for that claim. And here's more.

I later discovered, thanks to a social media message, that this was all in response to a call put out by the RSGB; the person who sent me the link commented on its wording:

"I actually thought their call for women to feature in the article was quite patronising so I decided NOT to answer. What I didn't like is a recurring theme. They assume that if you are a woman you won't be interested in the hobby just for fun. It must have been because it helps your career or something."

The RSGB's call.

 

In any case, as a result of all this, I had hoped that the RSGB board might now include the person featuring in the article (where neither the RSGB nor the hobby seems to have played any role in getting her into her career), or at least a shift towards a more gender-balanced composition. 

How did that exercise in a simple internet search (10am, 23/06/2025) go? Well, er... 

That's right, the 100% male (and white and, with one exception, pretty old) upper-echelon of the RSGB. The message isn't getting through to the right people...
 

ARRL: GB Boo-Boo

Leading on from sudden and never-before seen problems I recently had with ARRL's LoTW system, limited information has now come to hand that lets us see what is going on.

Now, just for clarity, I couldn't care two-hoots for DX awards and all that rubbish. It's sort-of nice to have a record of QSOs, especially of SSB QSOs, where the engagement may well have been memorable and enjoyable. For digital QSOs? Well, I mean, they are just conveyor-belt material, with only the very rarest being of any real human meaning (I count my spectacular 50W/3-ele 144MHz QSO with Cabo Verde in this latter category!)

So, what's happened?

My overarching callsign for LoTW is MW1CFN. 'W' signifies Wales, of course. I have a few certificates for other forms of my call, plus a couple for occasional, ongoing Marconi Carnarvon station commemorations. The following screengrab shows all this:

T-QSL, when I fired it up the other day to upload some GB1MUU QSOs, told me the certificate for that call expired in 54 days' time; did I want to submit a renewal request?  Why, yes, of course. When I began that process, I was confronted with this:

Here was the first sign of trouble: GB1MUU is listed in the greyed-out (unmodifiable) DXCC entity box as 'England'. Ticking 'Show All Entities' does not, in fact, pull up any alternative UK-based entities. It should show 'Wales', reflecting the entity I applied and obtained the certificate for in the first place. The ARRL have now confirmed that's what their records show, too:

Now, GBx callsigns are issued as temporary special event calls that may be used from anywhere within the UK (this has to be specified to a high location accuracy at the time of application). There no longer being a requirement or even a recommendation to include a regional secondary locator in any callsign, there has anyway never been a requirement to add one to a GBx call. 

You might say that 'GB' suggests those at OFCOM perceive of it as a central, all-UK type callsign and that the ARRL might be broadly right to decide it's an 'England' call. But that doesn't hold, because both GB and the UK have constituent countries, the only difference being that the concept of GB doesn't include Northern Ireland whilst the term 'UK' does. 

Which constituent country of the UK the GBx call is actually transmitted from is up to the operator to choose at the time of application, as appropriate; there is no automatic way for this to be determined. The call can be used only at one designated location and certainly can't be used in another constituent country of the UK to that it was applied for. In any event, OFCOM would not be so politically naive and contentious to try and force an operator like me, in Wales, to accept it's an 'England' callsign. This would be to reopen some very sore wounds indeed in the relationship between the coloniser and the colonised.

In my case I had, within the past three or so years, been able to select - and did select - Wales as my operating 'entity' within T-QSL/LoTw; this much is unarguably evident from the existing certificate. 

For completeness, persisting with the renewal process for GB1MUU resulted in:

So it can only be concluded that the ARRL has coded its system to decide that, whenever it sees a GBx callsign, it automatically deems it to be an England and England-only callsign. Other UK countries do not, according to the ARRL, now exist so far as GBx calls are concerned. 

Except, this is entirely at odds with the ARRL's DXCC list, which does include Wales as a DXCC entity. The ARRL, rather disgracefully, expect folk to cough-up $5.95 for the DXCC list rather than simply sticking it up online, so I have to rely on a third-party list by PA0ABM (dated 2022) to prove this - plus the fact my recently-renewed MW1CFN certificate is for 'Wales':

 

My guess is that someone at the ARRL - perhaps a new member of staff for example - at the ARRL has mistakenly interpreted GBx calls as applicable to England alone and changed the system accordingly. Whilst these things happen, they shouldn't be permitted to hold sway within the LoTW, once the errors are highlighted.

I was rather dreading having to look up the ARRL rules, their definition of DXCC entity and how that compares with the legal or conventional definition of a 'country'. But because Wales is firmly on the DXCC list, this descent into a black hole of definitions can be avoided and Wales (or any other relevant UK country) should not have been replaced with England when updating this and any other GBx callsign. 

This move by ARRL also, in an entirely unfair, retrospective manner, prevents me uploading GB1MUU QSOs because the 'Wales' I properly selected and was accepted by LoTW for the certificate in the past doesn't match the 'England' that they have now decided it should be.

I had two issues to raise with LoTW about my account, the second of which was this wrong assertion about GBx calls. This was either missed or entirely ignored in the response I received last night. I also sent a separate e-mail to the ARRL about this error. Days later, I received a response, asking for screenshots to help them resolve the matter. Having sent them a link to this post, a couple weeks later, I've heard nothing. 

In the same response, the ARRL also rather suggested I had simply entered the wrong DXCC, despite their records and mine showing this is definitively not the case; it's the ARRL that has done something to force an 'England only' determination. I don't think the ARRL guy had paid much attention to the problem.

In the first week of July, I received the rather unhelpful and perhaps evasive response that all was OK at the ARRL side. I was shown a screengrab to demonstrate this. Except, the callsign that had been selected was a different one - GB1QTM - a call I'd registered just a month earlier. It didn't address GB1MUU and how the certificate was being rejected as not England, despite having Wales in its ARRL-granted certificate! 

Update: things get worse!  Three emails later, now I'm patronised by an obtuse American telling me how GB callsigns work (thanks!) and that, er, I need to apply for an England certificate. Sorry? What? Pardon?  No, dumbass ARRL: I have a Welsh certificate GB callsign that the ARRL approved but now refuses to accept upon upload or certificate renewal. It's an ARRL problem, not a 'me' problem. 

 

ARRL email, July 09, 2025.

In any case, none of this matters to me personally, as I simply turned heel, abandoning the whole LoTW anachronism for the much nicer, simpler ClubLog. That, and the fact I don't exactly warm to Trumpland and its phenomenally obtuse ARRL deciding how the world outside America should work.

 

 

LoTW: Adiós!

I'm not your typical ham. That much I'll grant you.

I'm not motivated by radio contests and I have no interest in gathering 'DXCC' awards.

Of course, if they are on offer and awards of various kinds are granted by the way then, sure, I'll take them for all they're worth (i.e nothing beyond street-cred value).

Physical QSLing is something I used to enjoy on a fairly regular basis in the early days. Then it fell back to only returning what I was sent, or some especially 'exotic' DX. 

For the most part, the QSL cards were to interest my then young kids in the wider world. Operators, from a Swedish airline pilot to a Scottish man living on Cooke Island, were kind enough to send us cards and, quite often, little gifts. 

But postal rates increased quite a lot in the post-financial meltdown period. Money was anyway tight. Digital modes took hold such that you could have a list of 200 or more QSOs every day. QSLing them all - or even any - became increasingly burdensome and, ultimately, entirely impractical.

Logging QSOs was something I did in A4 page-to-a-day diaries. I loved doing that, especially when there was plenty of SSB going on. 

Eventually, I did start using e-QSL, QRZ.com's logbook feature and then LoTW. Over time, I opted only to use LoTW, it being the most recognisable logging scheme then on offer.

In fairness, LoTW has worked well for me over the years. It's rarely given any trouble, though the whole way it works through the T-QSL interface is now very outdated and irksome. In the past year, there was a big outage owing to a hack that the ARRL were reluctant to inform anyone about, at least until everyone had figured-out what had gone on for themselves.

This week, I went to upload about a month's worth of QSOs, which is pretty much the norm for me. T-QSL was having none of it. 

I apparently have no such overarching callsign as MW1CFN - funny, given it's worked for a decade or so thus far. No, the certificate hasn't expired, though on a second attempt at upload, it then advised me it expired in 2 days' time. Funny again, because I hadn't received any reminders as is usual with expiring calls.

GB1MUU's certificate is for DXCC 'Wales'. Yet, T-QSL has started deciding it's listed as 'England', even though a large number of QSOs over a couple of years have never generated this problem before. Even if it's a simple solution, I'm done with this LoTW rubbish.

 

Then it decided that my QSO's were being uploaded with the 'England' DXCC, even though the certificate within T-QSL itself shows 'Wales' - as it has done from the outset; why would any Welsh operator want to be associated with England, after all?

Whilst there is a LoTW help facility, the replies are often rudely terse and sound like a grumpy old man has been woken up to deal with something he'd rather not.

 

That's a lot better!

I decided this was the time to look elsewhere. I have previously registered with Club Log, but not used it much. I can't even remember why I registered! 

In any case, back to Club Log I came and the upload is as easy as pie. No two-key nuclear codes type verification, certificates and standalone uploaders and such like as with LoTW. Just upload the ADIF and it's all done. Plenty of data tools to keep the obsessives happy, too!