“Well there’s your problem …”

My Daddy had a sign in his basement workshop … it was cut from an old magazine, probably part of an advertisement. It was a simple quote he frequently used and it that served him well — “When all else fails, read the directions.”

readirectionsAnd so its been with my forays into Logbook of The World this week.

I’ll just say that LoTW isn’t a Rube Goldberg outfit, but my understanding of it was … lacking, shall we say. After I did more reading and studying, I realized I made some critical mistakes. The initial KY4Z certificate I requested was wrong because its QSO date started with the day it was issued and didn’t allow for logging my old contacts. Ooops! Operator error!

I deleted my recently received certificate, and then requested two new ones — one for my 1×3 call, and then one for the 2×1 callsign I’ve held since 2004. Before I requested them, I went back to determine when my callsigns were effective, and used that information to request callsigns that would allow the proper credit.

I’m not the first KY4Z, and I realized that I hadn’t specified the time range for either callsign. Ack!! That’s fixed now, thankfully.

And my task of moving files of Ye Old Thinkpad to another computer have been about 50 percent successful. I have about 1100 QSOs in my LoTW log, and those are only part of the contest Q’s on the laptop. I had fits trying to get a floppy disk that both the old IBM laptop and my son’s Dell server could both correctly read.  I’ll keep trying with the box of NOS disks I bought on eBay.

In the end, I’m thoroughly impressed with LoTW, and left to quote my Dad: “When all else fails, read the directions.”

73 de KY4Z  …. dit dit