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 It's rarely given any trouble, though the whole way it works through the T-QSL interface is now very outdated and irksome.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!