Wednesday 12 March 2014

LOTW

It's been a while since I have Blogged here. No excuse other that the weather has been rubbish so I have been mostly indoors watching Home and away.



It seems that the thing to be working towards at the moment is your DXCC award from the ARRL
Well I thought that I would investigate.
I loaded the ARRL website and took a look at the seemingly detailed list of what you have to do to open an account.
I downloaded the software as instructed and applied for a certificate
Well that was simple I thought.

About a week later nothing had appeared in my inbox so I looked again at the website and noticed that I needed to send a copy of my Amateur license and my driving license. So off I went to copy what was required.
Before I had  posted the envelope I had an e-mail saying that my application had been rejected. :-(

Then, before you could say "LID" I received another e-mail with a valid certificate attached... strange..
I still hadn't sent the docs off to the good old USA, which confused me no end.

Right I was off. Downloading the certificate was easy but there I came to a grinding halt. No one had mentioned that I needed a logging program to upload my logs.
Another hour spent trawling the internet, opening web pages that didn't exist any more and downloading huge files from smart looking sites that then failed.
Finally I found a logging program that looked like it would do the job.

I now have UCX LOG installed and have uploaded several pages from my log to LOTW.

Although they have tried very hard to make the process as simple as possible I can't help thinking that they would benefit from someone like me who doesn't have a clue, downloading the software for them and highlight where some clearer instructions are needed. (or am I just dim)

Also, when you are up and running, it isn't obvious where everything is. Some considerable exploring and downloading of PDF files is needed to find what you are looking for. My biggest problem was that I was expecting to see a nicely laid out log something like QRZ.com not a log that you had to search for.
I should imagine that the reason for this way of working will become apparent in the future. 

As of the time of writing I am still exploring the Logbook, finding new features all the time. I can't say that it will change the way I log completely as I still love to paper log. But it will be good for the awards. (eventually)




 

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