TVARC Clubmates,
I received this interesting information about ARRL’s LoTW from the Frankford Radio Club reflector.
73,
George K2DM

Sent from my iPhone

Begin forwarded message:

From: John Crovelli W2GD <[email protected]>
Date: June 12, 2024 at 2:52:49 PM EDT
To: [email protected]
Subject: [GoFRC] LoTW Update


LoTW Will Be Back!
Jon Bloom (ex-KE3Z) was the original developer of LoTW; he certainly understands LoTW‘s internals.
Yesterday (6/11), he posted this on the ARRL-LoTW online forum:
"Despite ARRL's statements that LoTW and DXCC data are safe, it seems that some users are concerned that this may not be the case due to the time that it is taking to restore service.
Perhaps it will ease some minds if I tell you that I know for certain that these data are safe. I know this because I personally assisted ARRL staff to get these data backed up to locations and systems that are in no way connected to ARRL's HQ or cloud systems. The LoTW data, for example, exists in multiple physical locations and cloud backup services. Such is also the case for the LoTW source code. In addition, I imported the LoTW data backup into a separate, new test database system to verify it. This took several days since the database is about 3 terabytes in size. (It's a LOT of data!)
Getting the systems themselves back on-line is another matter, and I have no information to share about that as I'm not involved in the ongoing process of restoring them. ARRL has apparently made the decision, wisely in my view, not to bring any affected systems back into service until all parts of them can be vetted and secured. But the data itself is safe, and LoTW will definitely be back at some point."
LoTW will re-awaken with the same terrible user interface it had when it first became publicly available in 2003. Perhaps ARRL leadership will learn from this “incident” that in the age of social media, its ongoing mismanagement of LoTW and associated award systems (DXCC, VUCC, WAS) damages the organization’s credibility with both existing members and prospective members. For an organization struggling to reverse its decline in membership, this is not a good thing!
de AA6YQ
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