[PVRCNC] ARRL logbook of world

[alsopb]

Guys,

The ARRL has released their logbook of the world for beta testing.

I've been playing with it.

It is a way for you to handle the QSLing chores with minimum pain. 
(Those of us who may have been bothered by never QSLing contest
contacts, can get some relief. )

It has promise but is burdened with massive overhead.

To date I have uploaded 55,000 qso's to the system with some
difficulty and considerable expense of time.

I need your voices (via testing and feedback) to indicate to the ARRL
how far off the mark their present product is.

Here is what I have found to date.

1) For security purposes every QSO is digitally signed. 
2) File sizes for upload are extremely bloated by the above
3) Creating the upload file is burdened by (1) above.  It takes 150
minutes to create a digitally signed log for 55,000 contacts.  Except
for 2 minutes of the time, the digital signature process is the
culprit.  They admit this.

Here is some file size info (30,000 contacts)
1) ADIF file from logging program 6 megabytes
2) ADIF file stripped on all but essential fields 3 megabytes
   (zipped version of this is .3 megabytes!  This zipped version would
be even smaller if the field tags for the data are removed)
3) Signed file size created by ARRL software 6.5 megabytes.

So they have added almost 6 megabytes of overhead for "security"
purposes.

Their system requires uploads via E-mail attachment.  This has been
quite difficult lately because of SPAM.  Took six tries to make it.

I contacted the ISP and they said we were crazy to try upload such a
file via E-mail attachment and dialup.  Furthermore, each ISP can set
the limit of the file size. There is no standard.  The trend is to
reduce (some to a few megabytes) the permitted attachment size.  They
said to use FTP. (Am ignorant of how to do this and whether it
requires something be done at ARRL site)

I've forwarded all this info to the ARRL.  Their response so far has
been:
1) There is nothing we can do about it
2) Get a faster machine to create the file quicker
3) We can handle 100 meg file sizes IF YOU CAN GET THEM HERE.

There has been no recognition that they have a big conceptual error in
the design of the system and that it should be changed before being
cast in concrete.

What I'd like is more beta testing voices pointing out these problems
to them.
Otherwise, it is likely that we will have a system which nobody wants
to use.

If you're interersted, go to the ARRL website and download the
software.

73 de Brian/K3KO