LoTW now supports the CQ WPX Award
Yesterday, W2VU announced that CQ Magazine’s WPX Award program may now use the ARRL LoTW system to apply for the award and its endorsements. For all the details on how to use the system see:
http://www.arrl.org/news/arrl-launches-logbook-of-the-world-wpx-award-integration
Clicking on the WPX tab once you’re logged in gives you results by band, mode and continent.
But something seems amiss – LoTW shows that I’ve confirmed more countries than prefixes. How is that possible?
It’s good to see the ARRL offering credit to a non-ARRL award. Hopefully WAZ will soon follow. And I wonder if eQSL is in the ARRL’s sights?
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Themocracy
The ARRL said it would take a while. The system has to process each and every QSL in the database to update the prefix totals for everyone.
I only had 1,144 QSLs and wanted to get my application in as quickly as possible to try for a 2-digit serial number for my Digital WPX award (only 77 had been issued as of the June CQ), so I went through and manually updated all of the QSOs and applied for the awards. That’s only the first step. Then I contacted the CQ WPX awards manager to arrange payment for the awards.
CQ and the ARRL do need to do a better job at documenting the process. CQ also needs to state how it or if it will handle combined applications using LoTW, eQSLs, and paper QSLs.
Right, a lot of people will probably want to use a combination of LoTW and traditional QSLs. I’m glad to see it happening and guess it’s best veiwed as a work in process rather than a done deal.