I suggest we all send the essence of Jack's email to ARRL on this point.
Strength in numbers.
Lou, W?FK
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 17:33:15 -0500
From: "Jack" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Dxbase] The ADIF report output of LoTW has been tweaked
To: "Greg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Dxbase (E-mail)"
<[email protected]>
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=response
Greg,
I think the answer is yes. But interestingly, thanks for pointing out
the
link.
WARNING. According to the ARRL web link for LoTW, they intend to
eliminate
their use of their own ADIF field called APP_LoTW_OWNCALL. As some of
you
might remember, this field was created by the ARRL developers of the
LoTW as
a way of identifying the callsign of the station who made the QSO. Very
important for those who have multiple callsigns. According to the
recent
note, the ARRL developers intend to eliminate this field in future LoTW
outputs (in the very near future according to their note) and instead
use a
field called STATION_CALL. The fields seem to have an identical
definition
and there is no mention of why the ARRL developers are going to
eliminate
the APP_LoTW_OWNCALL field or for that matter even why they are making
the
change.
In any case, DXbase uses the APP_LoTW_OWNCALL field when importing an
LoTW
style ADIF file. At the time we implemented the use of this field, we
were
assured that it would not be changed in the future, but here we are! If
the
ARRL developers eliminate this field, your LoTW imports from ADIF will
potentially not work correctly since the callsign of the station who
made
the QSO would no longer be read from the ARRL ADIF file. If this
matters to
you, then I urge you to notify the ARRL developers that they must
maintain
backward compatibility with the ADIF fields that have already been
implemented in third-party software and leave this field in tact
unchanged.
If the ARRL developers go forward with their change, you would have to
edit
the ARRL ADIF file you download and perform a search/replace of
STATION_CALL
with APP_LoTW_OWNCALL before you use the ADIF file obtained from ARRL
LoTW.
Regards,
Jack
----- Original Message -----
From: "Greg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Dxbase (E-mail)" <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2006 4:33 PM
Subject: [Dxbase] The ADIF report output of LoTW has been tweaked
> *Jan 31, 2006: ADIF output and FAQ changes* -- The ADIF report output
> of
> LoTW has been tweaked to better conform to the current ADIF
specification.
> Details <http://www.arrl.org/lotw/developer/adifout.html#adiffields>
are
> in the LoTW developers area.
>
> do i still use lotw adif in the import ?
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