[amsat-bb] Re: Satellites and the LoTW

[John Mock KD6PAG]

One of the other nuisances of LoTW is that is definitely NOT rover-friendly.
For example, each location i operate from has to be submitted as a separate
file.  As a rover, until recently, i had more locations that i have operated
from than confirmed grid squares!  Yet it's the rovers who provide the rare
grid squares and make life more interesting for the rest of us.  Roving can
be alot of work, and contact made as rovers don't even count towards most
awards.

I'm not sure LoTW handles grid square boundaries properly and it seems even 
less likely it handles grid square corners at all...  I ended up writing my 
own software for preparing QSL cards and LoTW is one of my biggest headaches. 

On the other hand, if God[dess] Forbid, i drop dead tomorrow [and have not
designated a QSL manager in my will], people will still have a way of their
confirming QSOs with me.. And perhaps someday all of this won't have to be
done by mail.  But alas, at this point, my confirmation rate via LoTW is
about 1.5% (and that is quite an improvement over a year ago). It's a step
in the right direction, but it's got a long ways to go.

So it would be nice if LoTW became more friendly to VHF-and-above operators
(as i don't think satellite operators are the only ones suffering) and they
come up with an automated way of designating satellites (such as utilizing
the current KEPS [plus an 'alias' file so they can match commonly used names
which differ from the NORAD names]).  A lot have gone up recently, albeit so
far, most are telemetry-only birds.

Finally, one of the nice things about the paper cards that is lacking on
LoTW is the personal touch in the comments on a card.  This is included in
LoTW submissions as the 'QSLMSG' field, but one does not get that field
back in the "ARRL Logbook of the World Status Report" which one has a
matching contact, alas.  So i'll keep sending out the paper ones in the
foreseeable future, there does not seem to be an adequate substitute...

		         -- KD6PAG  (Networking Old-Timer, Satellite QRPer)