[Dx4win] LOTW Test

[Pete Smith]

At 10:11 PM 5/18/03 -0400, Jim Reisert AD1C wrote:
>At Dayton, I spoke with Jack AA4LU (DXbase) about this very problem 
>(Paul/Steve did not have a booth this year). Yes, computer "illiterates" 
>are going to have trouble with this.  I expected more integration with the 
>logging software than Jack described to me.  The API (software programming 
>interface) hasn't been released to developers yet.  It will be interesting 
>to see if exporting, signing etc. can all be done through the logging 
>program simply by pushing one button.

This does seem to be the objective, and a worthy one.  The certificate 
request software seems to be fairly straight-forward, but I've been playing 
with computers long enough that my impression is probably invalid.

I heard Wayne Mills say that the API was to be released the day after his 
talk.  That tells me that they had some problems with the client-side 
software after the alpha test, perhaps accounting for the last period of 
delay.  It wasn't clear whether this API would include both TQSL and 
TQSLCert founctionality -- maybe Steve or Paul can tell us when they get it.

 From first looks, though, the delay seems to have resulted in a pretty 
good product -- I uploaded 9661 QSOs in one batch yesterday.  The per-qsl 
processing time was noticeably longer than for the smaller batches 
described in the getting started file, but the outcome seemed good -- only 
one QSO ignored for an error, and that because I had an "oh" instead of a 
"zero" in the callsign.

The only thing that puzzled me was that some people have reported seeing 
the number of matches go up as more people uploaded and they revisited the 
website.  I couldn't see anywhere that would have that sort of info 
available, nor is the page available that Wayne described, which tells you 
which QSOs are matches and gives you the option of sending them to the 
award managers.  I didn't expect the latter to work yet, but thought the 
former might be there for testing purposes.

I guess we all need to remember this is a beta, and there will be gaps and 
changes.  There has already been one update of the client-side software 
since last Thursday.

73, Pete N4ZR
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