[SFDXA] K4FK LoTW QSL milestone reached

[Sebastian, W4AS]

Other than errors being uploaded, the ARRL and a small group of volunteer programmers found that many users were continuously uploading either the same contacts, or exact duplicates of other contacts.

For those who may not be aware of it, much of the TQSL program has been recently rewritten.  One of the new features is that it will not upload exact duplicates (the user can bypass this if absolutely necessary).  I am not exactly sure how it determines if you are attempting to upload an exact duplicate - other than to say this will speed up LoTW since it won't be wasting time ignoring duplicates.  The rates of useless duplicates has been as high as 1/3 of all the data uploaded.

Note that if you purposely make a change such as mode, band, grid square etc., on previously uploaded QSOs, those are not considered to be exact duplicates and they will be uploaded and processed as usual.

Some of the major changes: TQSL is now one executable program; will notify the user of program updates; can create a backup of the important data files in the event of a computer crash or to move it to a different computer; will be able to automatically request certificate renewals either without or with minimal user intervention; will tell you if you are uploading an invalid frequency/band; validates the format of grid squares; checks for swapped CQ/ITU zones, and more.

While it has not been released yet, you should help out in the testing of it by downloading one of the release candidates.  I believe they are in release candidate number 6, you can find it here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/trustedqsl/files/TrustedQSL/v2.0-rc6/


73 de Sebastian, W4AS



On Oct 1, 2013, at 11:09 AM, Kai <k.siwiak at ieee.org> wrote:

> From the LOTW front page:
> 
> 521,597,990    QSO records have been entered into the system.
> 75,601,748    QSL records have resulted. [that is, QSO record matches, = 2 QSLs per match]
> 
> LOTW average is 2x75,601,748/521,597,990 = 0.29 or 29%   ... that's on the basis of more than half a billion QSOs!
> The actual error free rate is higher - there are a lot of errors uploaded.
> 
> 73,
> Kai