[Dx4win] How NOT to download contacts from LoTW into DX4WIN

[Rick Murphy]

I like to tell my children that I only look smart because I remember
when I make a mistake and that I've made lots of mistakes. Also, that
the best way to avoid making a mistake is to let someone else make it
first.
Here's a big mistake that I made that you probably want to avoid.

Some of the contacts in my DX4WIN log are a bit of a mess, mostly due
to portable stations. My old logger used to require calls to be in
prefix/home-call format - GU0/WA1SPT, for example. Thus folks who I
QSOd that did things the other way - WA1SPT/GU0 - wouldn't match in
LoTW. I've cleaned up a bunch of those and fixed a bunch of contacts
using Jim's DX4WIN to LoTW comparison tool.  Then I had the bright
idea, now that LoTW was all up to date, to download ALL of my QSOs
from LoTW into DX4WIN to update the DX4WIN side. I used my webpage
(http://www.rickmurphy.net/lotwquery.htm) to download my entire log
(including QSL detail) and used "LoTW/Import from LoTW" in DX4WIN to
import that log.

That was a spectacularly bad idea. I found this out when I generated a
submission report and found hundreds of bogus QSOs selected for
submission. I originally couldn't see why, but then the light went on:
all of them were marked as confirmed on LoTW. In fact, every QSO in my
log was marked as confirmed on LoTW in DX4WIN!

Why did this happen?
When you download from LoTW for importing to DX4WIN, you must only
download QSLs (confirmed contacts) not all QSOs. DX4WIN assumes that
everything you import from LoTW is a QSL and marks the QSO
accordingly.

To fix my bonehead move, I updated all of my QSOs to clear the LoTW
Confirmed flag,  downloaded QSLs only from DX4WIN and imported.
Problem solved.

If you use my query page to download your log, be sure to tick the
"Report on QSL records only" checkbox. Otherwise, bad things happen.
:-)

(Oh, and there's nothing wrong with how DX4WIN handles the log. If you
use the LoTW download page, you get a set of contact details that
don't include enough information to KNOW that they're confirmed or
not, but since that function only exports QSLs DX4WIN is doing what it
must do.)
73,
    -Rick
-- 
Rick Murphy, CISSP-ISSAP, K1MU/4, Annandale VA USA