Synchronizing QSLs: Updating Logged QSOs to Reflect their Confirmation via LoTW
The process of updating logged QSOs to reflect their confirmation via LotW is referred to as synchronizing QSLs. You should synchronize QSLs after determining that LotW has accepted QSOs you've uploaded; LotW will have matched your uploaded QSOs with those uploaded by your QSO partners, producing new QSLs. Your QSO partners may upload QSOs that match QSOs you've already uploaded, so its also a good idea to synchronize QSLs weekly even if you haven't uploaded new QSOs. This procedure assumes your PC has access to the internet; a variant of this procedure is available if your PC does not have access to the internet.
open the Main window's QSL tab
set the QSL via panel to LoTW -- if LoTW is disabled (greyed-out), the QSL Queue already contains QSOs and must be cleared before you can proceed (either by completing the operation that populated the QSL Queue, or by clicking the Clear button)
click the Sync LotW QSLs button; this will
direct LotW to download any new QSLs that have been created since you last clicked the Sync LotW QSLs button
set each newly-confirmed QSO's LoTW QSL SENT item to Y if it wasn't already in this state: a QSO confirmed via LoTW has been accepted by LoTW
set each newly-confirmed QSO's LoTW QSL RCVD item to Y; if the QSO has been granted DXCC award credit for a submitted LoTW confirmation, its LoTW QSL RCVD item will be set to V
set each newly-confirmed QSO's LoTW Confirmation item to reflect confirmation of a US State, Grid Square, or exact mode match; the LoTW Confirmation item will contain
G if this QSO's Grid item is confirmed via LoTW
2 if this QSO's Grid2 item is confirmed via LoTW
3 if this QSO's Grid3 item is confirmed via LoTW
4 if this QSO's Grid4 item is confirmed via LoTW
M if this QSO's Mode item exactly matches the QSO partner's uploaded Mode
S if this QSO's US State is confirmed via LoTW
Z if this QSO's CQ Zone is confirmed via LoTW
- display a report file showing how many new QSLs were received, and indicating whether any DXCC entities, entity-bands, and/or entity-modes were newly confirmed by this operation.
filter the Log Page Display to contain only QSOs confirmed via LotW, and sort it so that the most recently-conformed QSOs appear at the bottom
When executing step 3 above, the title bar of DXKeeper's Main window may display the words "Not Responding". This is "Windows speak" for "waiting for input or output", and should be ignored.
At the completion of the Sync LoTW QSLs operation, the Log Page Display is filtered to show only QSOs confirmed via LotW, and sorted in ascending or descending order of their LotW date rcvd items; thus if you have DXKeeper configured for ascending sort order, your QSOs most recently confirmed via LoTW will appear at the bottom of the Log Page Display. When you're done reviewing these latest arrivals, you can restore the Log Page Display to show all QSOs in order of their QSO Begin date and time items by depressing the CTRL key while clicking the Filter panel's X button at the bottom of the Main window's Log QSOs tab.
Handling of LoTW QSL Detail Inconsistencies
The Sync LotW QSLs operation compares each QSL reported by LoTW with its matching logged QSO. Information reported by LoTW that is not present in the logged QSO will be automatically added unless it is inconsistent with the callsign; for example, a logged QSO missing a Iota tag will be updated with the Iota tag contained in its matching QSL, but a QSO with AA6YQ missing a CQ zone will not updated with a CQ zone of 6. The comparison process compensates for syntactic differences; eu1 and EU-001 are considered identical, for example. If the a logged 4-character gridsquare matches the first 4 characters of the matching QSL's 6-character gridsquare, then the logged QSO will be updated with the 6-character gridsquare. When information reported by LoTW is inconsistent with the information contained in the QSO's matching QSL, however, the conflict is resolved as specified in the Handling of LoTW detail inconsistencies panel on the QSL Configuration window's LoTW tab, which provides four choices:
- always replace the logged data with the LoTW QSL data
- always preserve the logged data, ignoring the LoTW QSL data
always preserve the logged data, ignoring the LoTW QSL data, and describe each inconsistency in the report displayed when the Sync LotW QSLs operation completes
- display a dialog presenting the logged data and the LoTW QSL data so that the user can choose (the default setting)
If either the LotW QSL or the logged QSO specifies more than one grid square, the Sync LotW QSLs operation will as described above report logged grids that are not specified in the QSL, and grids specified in the QSL that are not logged in the QSO, but will not modify the logged grids with LotW QSL data regardless of the Handling of LotW detail inconsistencies setting.
Other Topics
Debugging a "No Matching QSO in Log" Error When Synchronizing With LoTW
Synchronizing with LotW from a PC not connected to the internet