[Dx4win] Previously Logged FT8 QSOs and Version 9 - my experience

[Don Butler]

I’m a long time DXer but have never operated the digital modes.   I did however become very active on FT8 in early September ……. and over the past two months have managed to log 961 QSOS, with emphasis on DX.  I have now worked 156 different DXCC entities and confirmed 122 of them via LOTW.  I received my 100th confirmation on October 1 and immediately submitted for Digital DXCC ….. which is now in the books at ARRL … I’ve been using DX4WIN for award tracking since the year 2000 … and until this week have always used version 7.

I noted early on that DX4WIN did not recognize FT8 as a mode, so I contacted Paul and learned that he was working on a new version that would be able to handle FT8 … so I decided to temporarily log all FT8 QSOs as another mode (I chose “JT6M”) and I would fix things later with global editing.   So all of my FT8 QSOs were logged as JT6M .. and the sent and received signal reports were all logged as “599”.   Version 9’s FT8 capability is really the only reason I upgraded from Version 7 to Version 9, which I think I mentioned in my post regarding the problem I had with migrating version 7 logfiles into version 9 (that problem has been solved as noted in another post).

All of my FT8 QSOs were made using WSJT-X  software and have been logged and continually appended into the wsjtxlog adif file.  I have been incrementally importing wsjtxlog.adi into DX4WIN (after globally editing the mode field to JT6M)…. and also for uploading to LOTW.
 
Since upgrading to DX4WIN Version 9.01 the other day I have now finished the process of cleaning my FT8 logs and thought I would share my experience on the reflector since there may be others who might be going down a similar pathway.

Here’s what I did:
 
1.	Save current logfile to a secure location …. (Just in case something  really gets screwed up!)
2.	Delete all previously logged FT8 QSOs (Logged as JT6M) …  So in my case, I deleted all of my “JT6M” QSOs 
	a.	Filter/Search to select all JT6M QSOs
	b.	Multiple QSO operations/Delete QSOs to delete the selected JT6M QSOs
	c.	Save interim logfile under an “interim” name

3.	Import wsjtxlog.adi  into the DX4WIN log.  This is very important because this log includes all QSO info, including the numerical FT8  signal reports … which were rejected as invalid in earlier versions of DX4WIN and were logged as “599” in every case.  (thanks to K9EL and W8DN for making this suggestion …. I had first decided to just leave the 599 reports alone, which is a reasonable option …. But to me the import is much better).  Save the interim logfile again.
  
4.	Update LOTW confirmation data of the newly uploaded FT8 QSOs.
	a.	Download the adif file from LOTW as per instructions that can be found here:  https://lotw.arrl.org/lotw-help/developer-query-qsos-qsls/
	b.	In my query I selected (1) all QSOs after the date which preceded my first FT8 QSO and (2) Confirmed QSOs only …. But any query that selects all of your confirmed FT8 QSOs will work for this situation ….. which is primarily necessary to restore LOTW confirmation status of the FT8 QSOs that had been deleted, and then replaced.
	c.	Update LOTW status in your log with LoTW/Confirm LoTW using ADIF file
	d.	Save logfile again.

Of course I carefully checked the log and ran a few DXCC reports several times throughout the process to make sure that new problems were not being created … If that did occur I have not yet found it.

In my case everything worked well EXCEPT FOR ONE THING …. Remembering that my Digital DXCC application had been approved in early October …. For my first 100 digital confirmations …. And before the FT8 QSOs were initially deleted from the log, those first 100 confirmed FT8 QSOs had been flagged as “Checked” for Mode DXCC …. All of those “Checked” flags were lost during the QSO deletion/restoration process …. And the DXCC Checked information was not contained in the imported wsjtx log adif file..   So I chose to enter the lost flagged data manually …. Which was not a problem since I had a list of those submitted QSOs from my recent LOTW submission … and it was easy to select a short list from the logfile using Filter/FT8/Confirmed …. And just go down through the list and manually edit the DXCC mode field for the appropriate QSOs …  exactly 100 of them…

Another option might have been to simply do a global edit and change the mode for all JT6M QSOS back to FT8 …. And leave the 599 reports as they were …. That would have preserved the Award Checked status data ….. and would obviate the need to import the wsjtxlog file and update LOTW status … So there are really two options … the option I chose restored the valid signal report data … which is really meaningless (but may be important to an OCD guy like me) …. And it took a little more time … but it worked and my logs are now exactly as they should be.

So that was my experience …. I hope sharing this might help someone else who might be going through something similar…

73,
Don, N5LZ