Update July 1, 2024. LoTW is back up! It is running slow, but it is available. Thank goodness.
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When I wrote the article back in May, I hardly thought that LoTW would be down a month later.
Sadly, the outage continues.Β
My suspicions were correct, however, that this was something more than a simple networking problem. The ARRL has since admitted their network was viciously and uniquely hacked. I can certainly understand their caution to make sure that every system linked to LoTW is given a clean bill of health before turning the system back on.
Earlier this week, on Tuesday there was apparently a brief period of time when LoTW was accessible. A couple of my ham buddies managed to upload some contacts. They'll have to wait for confirmations when the rest of us can get in.
I do hope it is soon. I'm really missing this service.
One of my goals for 2024 is to have confirmed contacts with at least 1,500 unique POTA parks.Β As of Saturday June 22, I had 1,401 confirmed.
So 99 more parks to go.Β Things have slowed down considerably as propagation during daylight hours no longer favors fairly productive areas, as well as the need to work a unique park.
Yours truly after working #1,000 at US-3315. Photo: Paul, KW1L.
One of the genius things about Parks on the Air is the awards program. There are all kinds of awards to choose from, and they are all automatically awarded. You donβt have to submit QSL cards or pay fees. They just appear on your awards page, and you can pick and choose which ones mean something to you.
Iβve never been much of a wall paper chaser, so, aside from the Rhino Rover award that my friend, Tom, W8TAM, helped me achieve, the 24 awards that I have somehow managed to accumulate donβt really mean that much to me. Yesterday, though, I reached a milestone that brought a smile to my face (as you can see by the photo at right). I hit 1,000 contacts from US-3315, Island Lake Recreation Area.
Itβs been very hot here in the Midwest, but somehow, I managed to cajole Paul, KW1L, and Rick, K8BMA to accompany me to the park. We left my house just before 9 am, and despite some slow traffic, we managed to get to the park and get set Β up by 10 am. Yesterday, instead of using my 66-ft. doublet, we set up Paulβs new Cobra antenna. Despite its claim to being βultra light,β it was a bit heavy for my fiberglass mast. We solved that problem by not using the top two sections of the mast.
Our antenna for this activation was a new Cobra antenna. Photo: Paul, KW1L.
I donβt know if it was band conditions (I was calling CQ on 14.062 MHz), or the antenna, or a combination of both, but I began working them one after another right off the bat. I made the first 10 contacts in less than 10 minutes. I made the 45 contacts I needed to reach 1,000 in just a little over an hour, and I was up to 55 contacts at 11:25, at which point, we decided to eat lunch.
The contacts we made were literally all over the map. Somehow, the skip was short enough to work into New York and Pennsylvania, but also south to Florida, east to Prince Edward Island, and west to British Columbia.
QSO map for my June 20, 2024 activation of US-3315, Island Lake Recreation Area.
After lunch, we switched to 15 meters to see what band conditions were like there. Right away, I got a call from an OK2 station, but not much afterwards. We pounded out another six contacts before calling it quits. It was starting to get hot out there, and any extra contacts would just be anti-climactic.
As for POTA, itβs onwards and upwards. I have 315 contacts from the Pinckney State Recreation Area (US-3322). Itβs only a little further away from my house than the Island Lake Recreation Area, and in some ways, is a nicer park. Iβm thinking that if I can get out 2-3 times a week, I can get to 1,000 contacts from there by the end of the season.
Things have slowed down a bit.Β I suspect Bill hasnβt been out in the early morning hours as often as he has in the past due to band conditions (the past month+ has seen very weak signals on most bands up here in New England).
Nevertheless, six weeks after the last Operator-to-Operator award, I received one for 450 park contacts with K4NYM today.Β Thanks for always being there Bill!!!
FT8 has been a revolution. The technology has made DXing really easy. Or has it? I continue to be amazed at how much difficulty people have working DXpeditions on FT8.Β
Last year, there were DXpeditions to Bouvet (3Y0J), Crozet (FT8WW) and Sable Islands (CY0S). The most recent DXpedition to Glorioso Islands (FT4GL) has brought it all back to me.
Let's start off with a few observations on people trying to work these DXpeditions:
Wrong Cycle - It's amazing the number of folks trying to work DX that are calling on the wrong cycle. FT8 has even and odd cycles. Even cycles start at 00 or 30 seconds, and odd cycles start on 15 and 45 seconds. You always call on the cycle the DX station is NOT transmitting. Indeed, if you double-click on a decode of the DX station, WSJT-X will set up the correct cycle. So how are people getting it wrong?
Endless Calling - I've noticed some stations keep calling the DX after the DX station has QSYed or QRTed. A little bit of hopeful calling isn't unusual on Phone or CW, or even RTTY. But stations continue to call much later -- like an hour later, and they are still calling.
Calling without Response - Some stations don't respond when the DX station calls them. They keep calling instead of advancing to the next step. This can get really bad. During the FT8WW expedition, I saw FT8WW keep responding to the same station for more than 10 minutes. Each response had a different signal report. This made it clear that FT8WW was heading this caller quite well, but the caller wasn't hearing FT8WW at all. Instead, that station took up a valuable response slot for 10 minutes -- denying perhaps 20-40 stations from working FT8WW.
Confusing Fox/Hound (FH) and MSHV - Most DXpeditions using FT8 use either FH or MSHV in order to maximize the number of contacts they can make. It is easy to get confused with these two modes. They appear similar. Both allow for the DX station to transmit multiple FT8 carriers at the same time. FH imposes additional behavior to both the Fox and Hound ends of the contact. In particular, there are audio-frequency dependencies that FH enforces. But, it is perfectly possible to work a Fox station even if you are not in Hound mode. MSHV requires no special modes. And yet someone accused people of DQRM, calling FT4GL below 1000 Hz, when the DX was using MSHV, not FH.
What causes all these odd observations? I believe they all resolve to a single cause -- people are calling DX they cannot hear. That's right, people are calling DX stations they aren't decoding at all.
This is fundamentally wrong. I wrote about this years ago on how to bust a pileup.Β You cannot work DX if you cannot hear them. If you aren't decoding the DX station, stop calling. Yeah, that's hard, but your calls won't net you a contact, and you may be actively depriving someone who canΒ hear the DX from making one.Β
I think FT8 has made some people lazy. They hear some DX station is active on some frequency, probably through a spotting network. So they switch to that frequency, set their watchdog timers to an hour or more, and enable their transmitter. Then they go off and drink a few cool 807s while their computer works the DX for them.
Farfetched? No, it explains all the observations above.
Be a good FT8 operator -- don't call DX when you cannot decode them. Wait until you can decode them reliably, just about every cycle -- then start calling.
May 16th, there was an issue with Logbook of The World (LoTW). I could not load the main page at all -- receiving an error indicating the server wasn't responding.
That's pretty normal stuff, actually. There are dozens of problems that can result in this kind of error, so I wasn't surprised. I figured the ARRL staff would address it quickly. But, after much of the day, I was still getting the error.Β
So, I sent a message to lotw-help@arrl.org, informing them that the web site wasn't responding, kindly asking when they expected it to be back up. I mentioned I was surprised there was no notice of the outage on the ARRL.org web site.
Later that day, the ARRL put up a noticeΒ that there was a service disruption involving access to the network, and that it affected LoTW and the ARRL Learning Center. They even updated it the next day, addressing concerns users had over information privacy.
But then, nothing happened. Not until May 22nd, when they updated the notice without really adding any information.Β
Now, part of this delay may be due to the fact that much of the ARRL staff were all out at the Xenia Hamvention. But, that was a week ago.
What gives? Sure, networking problems. Honestly, though, as a computer professional, networking problems generally don't take more than a week to solve. I'm beginning to suspect there's something more than the ARRL hasn't told us, but I can't be sure.
I'm really missing access to LoTW. In the last 20 years, it has really become central in my enjoyment of the hobby. I do hope I'm wrong, and that ARRL manages to fix this problem soon.
Willy, W1LY, is a dear friend of mine.Β Heβs the sort of person who is always looking to help, and has serious skills to make things happen.Β Here at casa WB4SON, for example, he launched a 160-meter Inverted-L antenna in the air.Β That enabled me to complete WAS and DXCC on the 160-meter band, and is the only antenna I use on HF on all bands.
Willy was with me on my first POTA activation, and managed to get me hooked.Β I was ecstatic yesterday when I received an Operator To Operator Award for hunting him during 50 of his park activations.Β Most recently he has been logistics for his wife Linda during her bucket list hike of the Appalachian Trail.Β She has completed the trail from its origin in Georgia through the Vermont border.Β Many of his activations have been at various parks along the trail.
A couple of new POTA awards came in this week β first was the Operator To Operator Award with Bill K4NYM.Β Unsurprisingly another Bear Cave Award came is as well, this time for Green Swamp US-5330 in Florida (thank you Bill).
I was surprised to receive a QSL in the mail from Bill Brown, K4NYM, who has made over 190,000 QSOs from 388 parks.Β I canβt imagine the number of QSL cards he must send out!Β I canβt even imagine the amount of work required to log that many contacts and upload them.Β THANK YOU BILL!!!
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But in non-K4NYM news, I received a Repeat Offender Award for a park in Ohio.Β So I do have contact with folks other than Bill.
Well a Bear Cave, of course!Β I just received the Repeat Offender Bear Cave Award for working US-4559 sixty times!Β This is one of K4NYMβs favorite parks, judging from how frequently heβs there.
Lest you think I only work Bill, I am 156 parks away from hunting 1,500 unique ones.Β I usually work about 6 HF Parks on the Air most weekdays, and twice that on the weekends.
As of yesterday, Iβve bumped into Bill Brown K4NYM in over 300 Parks on the Air!Β Bill is an avid activator and I usually manage to work him in two different parks (sometimes more) almost every day.
Iβm sort of amazed how many times Iβve worked Bill Brown K4NYM as he does activations in Florida.Β Usually it is several times a day as he moves from park to park.Β Honestly, itβs pretty easy once you start paying attention to his operating routines.Β I picked up another Repeat Offender award, as well as completed my 250 Operator to Operator award.
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