All, With regard to the message below, which was sent to all Directors and Vice Directors, I have forwarded it to the LoTW committee for investigation. Immediately on reading it, there were two clear issues: 1) the technical issue about the problem the user experienced; and 2) the problem of lack of communication to the user which resulted in this e-mail blast. With regard to the technical problem, it appears to be new, that is, not a known bug. There are several reasons why the user may have this experience, and additional information about the user's situation will need to be obtained before it can be resolved. This process will be put in motion. With regard to communication, it sounds as if e-mail to Logbook Help and other sources of resolution haven't been used, which would already have identified and rectified the problem. Nonetheless, someone should have been monitoring social media to suggest this approach. A method for ensuring this needs to be devised and put in place. To me, communication is the deeper issue. The user would never have needed to send this message if he had been directed to the right place to get his questions answered. We will determine how to avoid this sort of open-loop situation in the future. 73, Greg, K0GW Chair, LoTW Study Committee -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: LoTW VUCC Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2017 10:33:46 -0400 From: Mike Diehl <diehl.mike.a@gmail.com> <diehl.mike.a@gmail.com> To: w3tom@arrl.org, k3rf@arrl.org, w9xa@arrl.org, k9la@arrl.org, ka0ldg@arrl.org, k0bbc@arrl.org, k5uz@arrl.org, wb4rhg@arrl.org, wa8efk@arrl.org, w8wtd@arrl.org, n2ybb@arrl.org, w2udt@arrl.org, k0das@arrl.org, k0aiz@arrl.org, k1ki@arrl.org, k1twf@arrl.org, k7cex@arrl.org, ab7zq@arrl.org, w6rgg@arrl.org, k6jat@arrl.org, n2zz@arrl.org, n2cop@arrl.org, wy7fd@arrl.org, k0rm@arrl.org, w4ozk@arrl.org, n4zuw@arrl.org, n6aa@arrl.org, aa7a@arrl.org, k5rav@arrl.org, n5aus@arrl.org All, I'm reaching out to all of the directors as there is a problem with LoTW that affects members in every division. This problem has been going on for several months now without any acknowledgement by the league. A simple announcement that it is known about and is being looked into will go a long way in helping users to feel a bit more at ease about lost award credits. Attempts have been made on social media to get the ARRL account to issue some kind of response but this has proven fruitless. The general response we've seen from other members is to send the league an email but in a time that we are trying to engage the youth I would highly recommend a stronger social media presence. On to the LoTW problem. There seems to be an issue with how credits are counted for VUCC which only seems to happen once a rule set is changed in some way causing the loss of credits. In my own personal experience I made a rule change and it took me from 312 credits down to 70, as you can imagine it's quite frustrating. At some point in time, mine, as well as others, were awarded some of their credits back. In my case I was brought back to 290 credits which is still quite a bit off from being accurate. Similar experiences were had by the many other members I've discussed with. After discussing with several of the other ops who have ran into this we have found some common denominators which you may or may not be aware of. The first being that I've only heard of credit losses by VUCC Satellite accounts. I believe this to be related to how satellite operators like to activate grid squares, often at grid lines or corners due to the portability of their stations. Ultimately the vast majority of credit losses all revolve around QSLs that contain more than one grid square. I believe this to be in part due to the league's own specification that is inaccurate. You can find the specifications here https://lotw.arrl.org/lotw-help_devel_en/developer- query-qsos-qsls/?lang=en The specification claims that when multiple grids are part of a QSL then multiple lines of GRIDSQUARE will be returned. After starting development on some mobile software that queries LoTW, I found that there were missing grids in my count. Investigating a known QSO and searching through the ADIF data I found where the problem was. Unlike the specification, what was actually returned was a line called VUCC_GRIDSQUARES with each listed in comma separated format which is not mentioned anywhere in the specification. After writing an exception for this my grid count was once again accurate. I believe that after the server upgrade some code was used that followed the actual spec and when credits are recalculated it fails on an ADIF field that was never documented. Again, I'm reaching out to the many in the hope that someone will pursue a resolution and equally important, a public response from the league that at the very least it's being looked into. I think I speak for many of the amateur satellite operators in saying that an acknowledgment is long overdue and we all hope to hear something soon. 73, Mike Diehl W8LID