I passed Bill's question on to Jon Bloom. Here is Jon's explanation. Dave K1ZZ No, those are two separate passwords. The one you select when requesting your certificate will be used by you when you are signing your log to submit it to LOTW. Its purpose is to "unlock" (decrypt) the private key that is generated during creation of the certificate request and then stored on your computer. The password mentioned in the message, on the other hand, is one that US amateurs receive by mail and then have to supply to us in order to get their certificate issued. However, that requirement is not in force during this test phase. There is yet another password, which is what you use to access the Web site. As it stands at present, that password is assigned to you when you get your certificate. Yes, I know this proliferation of passwords is confusing, but each password is used for a different purpose. We may be able to make the postal password and the Web site password the same eventually. And maybe we should choose different terminology to describe each of the passwords to make them readily distinguishable. But I'm not smart enough to come up with anything suitable. Much of this will be made more clear, I imagine, when Dave P. finishes the FAQ he's working on. Jon -----Original Message----- From: Edgar, William (SM, Western PA) Sent: Friday, January 03, 2003 6:30 PM To: arrl-odv Subject: [ARRL-ODV:8162] [ARRL-ODV:8160] LoTW First test Dave, I had a chance to test this out. And for others testing this out, I offer this advice, when the certificate generator asks you to select a password to protect your certificate, DO NOT DO IT. Downloading the program was a breeze. Installing the program was equally as simple. Requesting the certificate generator to issue a certificate went well until it asked me to select a password, which I did. I sent the certificate request out to the requested email address and received a prompt reply back. The reply essentially told me that since I requested a password that my password would be printed on a postcard in the mail. Above that text, I was told that no passwords are being mailed out and that "Either your certificate is automatically sent to you (in a separate message) or it's not." Assuming that if one sends the certificate request with the requested selection of a password, that they will not be able to test this system. Is this correct? - Bill Edgar N3LLR AR>This afternoon I had an opportunity to try out Logbook of the World. If you have a log in ADIF or Cabrillo format, you can, too! The "greetings" message from Dave Patton, NT1N, that follows this note provides the instructions on how to download the beta version of the program. Further instructions are included in the download. For test purposes the DX logs submitted for the 2002 ARRL CW DX Contest are in the database. Converting my Cabrillo log of about 4,000 QSOs into "TQSL" format took about 90 seconds. Uploading and matching with the QSOs already in the database took another 97.6 seconds and yielded 1,675 confirmed QSOs. As they say, your mileage may vary. Note that at this stage the "query handler" is a bit primitive. The critical elements to be tested right now are the certificate generation and data conversion/uploading functions. 73, Dave K1ZZ