Gentleman,
It’s quite common for people to change callsigns. This can be because they have upgraded their type of licence, or they have moved QTH or they have been able to take up a vanity callsign or whatever. We are aware of this and so changing callsigns is handled by the database.
When you enter an activation log you specify the callsign you used and this is normally the same as your own callsign. Some people have some cool SOTA club calls (NS0TA for example) and they can enter that callsign in the logs and they submit the logs against their own account. Likewise entering a chaser QSO is similair in you can specify the callsign you used.
In addition to this, your database account has an associated callsign. This is the callsign that is shown in the honour rolls. So my account has the call MM0FMF/P associated and that is what appears in the honour roll even though I have used GS3PYU/P, M0FMF/P, MW0FMF/P, GX3PYU/P, F/MM0FMF/P, HB9/MM0FMF/P and CT9/MM0FMF/P for activations and chases.
If you change your callsign all you have to do is log in and select “Logon/Logoff>Change User Details” and change the callsign on that page. The database will then log you out. When you look at the honour rolls your new callsign will be displayed where your old callsign was. All your logs will still be valid.
WHAT YOU DON’T DO IS CREATE A NEW ACCOUNT WITH THE NEW CALLSIGN DOWNLOAD ALL THE LOGS FOR YOUR OLD ACCOUNT AND THEN UPLOAD THEM FOR THE NEW ACCOUNT THEN DELETE ALL THE OLD LOGS
There is no need for this when the feature to support changing callsigns exists.
What you cannot do is change your username. Usernames are used to identify an account by a human. The database uses other methods. Once you have typed your username and the matching account has been located, the username is not used again. I realise that many people use their callsign as username and when they change callsign they want their username to match. Well I’d like a Maserati MC Stradale but I’m not getting one and they’re not getting a username that matches their callsign. We’re both going to have to want.
What I find damn annoying is when the “usernames don’t change” is explained to people they have gone on and created a new account and spent time shuffling data about despite being told not to do this just so their username is the same as their callsign. That is the equivalent of sticking up two fingers at the man who runs the database. It’s not a wise thing to do.
Well it stops now. Someone else has just done this and dropped me a mail “Oh I’ve fannied about moving logs here there and everywhere so I don’t need this old account as I have a new one” and that’s the last time. It creates work for me in that I have to check everything is still OK and then clean up. I am so tempted to lock out the callsigns of everyone who does this in the future. Not so they cannot log in to the database, but invalidate the callsign so it cannot be entered in an activation or chaser log. I’m fairly sure that may get their attention when nobody can use the callsign.
Does this mean you cannot have more than 1 account? No, I know some people have 2 callsigns and use 1 for VHF and 1 for HF. Having 2 accounts for that is fine by me. I know of a G4 who will be spending 3months/year in 8P9-land and if he wants a separate account for his 8P9 activities then that is find. So multiple accounts are not an issue. Just moving data about to satisfy some vanity issue.
Rant over.
Classic !