Hi,
I worked G8OHM/P on his 28 July activation of G/CE-002.
I can see from the summit history that his log has been
entered onto the database, but on entering my chaser entry,
I do not get a star against the point. I would like to check
against his log if there is an error, but I cannot find this
activator callsign on the roll of honour. I think this may be
because it is a club callsign, and the participant may be using his
own callsign.
My question is whether there is any way of tracing the log through the
database?
However, just because you can’t see that data it doesn’t mean I can’t.
Now G8OHM is a call I remember well from my contesting days down in GW-land. I hope he enters his contest logs better than this one or he’ll lose gazillions of points for busted calls.
I’ve reordered the letters to something more approaching your callsign Dave.
Gosh, the powers these fingers can wield. I’ve gone all light headed
It’s not a “he”, it’s a “them”. The callsign is that of the South Birmingham Club, and the QRZ.com entry is for the licence holder. Whilst he should know who used the call for SOTA purposes, it isn’t necessarily him.
Anyway, getting back to the original question, why worry about the lack of an asterisk? You don’t need it for SOTA purposes. All you need is to be sure that you had the claimed QSO.
I know you don’t need to have the *, but if it doesn’t appear I
like to know the reason. It could be that I have entered something
wrong in the database, or the activator has misentered my callsign.
I’m ok with that, but from personal preference, if my call doesn’t
appear in the activator’s log, even though I am 100% certain the contact
was made, I won’t enter it.
I can relate to the concern that you may have made a mistake when entering chases into the database. That is a matter of personal satisfaction.
However, I cannot get worked up about other folks’ errors. My callsign has been mistakenly entered in various activators’ logs as G2VQO, G4VQO, G0VQO, and my favourite G3VQ0. Add to that the variations of using GO, GQ, GR and GV prefixes, and the possibilities are endless!
I do my best to ensure that activators have copied my callsign correctly during the contact, but I have no control over how they write what they heard, or enter what they have written. Life’s too short to worry about such matters!
Good luck with trying to straighten out errors in other peoples’ logs!
Totally agree Les. It is nice to get errors corrected when identified, and of course no-one in their right mind would want to enter a QSO that was not good. But if the activator makes a typo, that is no reason to deny yourself the chaser points from a good contact.
In reply to M1EYP:
All though a bit drastic i have started to delete some of my contacts that have not been confirmed all though they have so far been only the one pointers best 73 Dave M3XIE
In reply to -M3XIE:
While the bands are crap why not spend a little of the time to look at the activators logs you may find some where you are not in and a few with simple errors like not used utc band etc and just adjust your log rather than pester the activators with emails. Those activators who do not submit a log take the choice do I or don’t I .
The stars are being misused. If the only way to stop the misuse is to remove them from users then they will be removed, leaving them only for awards cross-checking by MT staff.
The database provides a valuable resource of which paths are workable on any day, often when using QRP equipment and basic antennas. Every contact in the database has value, even if someone’s call is jumbled. When people start deleting contacts which are valid just because they can’t confirm it is in some other log, we lose valuable information. The whole value of the database is devalued because it’s not “warts and all” but some sanitised subset of the data.
Now I can scan through the logs with a script and see who checks their QSO partner’s log and then deletes QSO to produce a list of the “deleters” and disable confirmations for just them. Or I can take the easy road and disable it for all non-MT users.
Which would you do if you want to protect the integrity of the collected data for future analysis of propagation/conditions and band occupation?
Or I can take the easy road and disable it for all non-MT users.
Definitely the pragmatic choice. (And yes, it boggles me why folks would delete perfectly valid contacts because the individual at the other end hasn’t entered a log, or has made a typo, or whatever, too.)
A flip-side approach (more work, I know…) might be to add reciprocal log indications to the activator logs rather than to chaser logs. That’d show activators how many of their QSOs are with active chasers (if they didn’t know already), and how many are with other random contacts…
The stars are being misused. If the only way to stop the misuse is to
remove them from users then they will be removed, leaving them only
for awards cross-checking by MT staff.
You say the stars are not an indication of a valid contact, then you say they are used for awards cross-checking by the MT. This makes no sense to me at all.
I can’t say this is how it would be used by the MT and I’m not trying to insinuate anything at all in that direction. However, I am a business intelligence analyst by trade and that means I know one or two things about how data might be analysed in order to come to certain conclusions.
Does a QSO HAVE to have a star? Well, no. It’s absence doesn’t make it invalid.
However, on the other hand…
For a person claiming an award, might a ‘disproportionate’ number of QSO’s without stars or a noticeable pattern of unconfirmed QSO’s against that persons database entries indicate ‘foul play’?? It might do.
In this case, James, both apply. They are not a valid indication of a contact, but at the same time could be used by the MT to indicate whether something “doesn’t quite look right”.
James… you live in what looks to be an amazing part of the world, by the way. We’re very jealous here! ;)))
