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Saturday, December 20, 2025 18:37 UTC
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| Interesting Statistics |
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| We have 1.405 BILLION eQSLs from 616,940 User accounts in 350 Countries! |
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| Welcome New User |
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UT7am
Bondar Yurii from UKRAINE
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| Site News |
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| We are making changes to the eAwards Rules pages to synchronize the rule...
(more)
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| Last Heard |
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80M: RU8W, R6XD,
more...
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| eAwards Summary |
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There are currently 129 different eAwards and endorsements available.
We have approved 462,439 eAward applications to date.
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Most eAwards: F6ECI,ZL1BQD,S55DX,EA3ZD,EA4AA...
Power Users: AA3B,N3RS,4Z4DX...
Latest Authenticity Guaranteed
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| Community |
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Charter Members: AF4LL,EA6SK,G3PGA...
Earliest QSOs in the database
Some of our members' ancient QSL card collections!
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If you have a ham radio oriented business, take a look at our advertising opportunities!
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Shop Online for amateur radio books and other items!
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Zip Codes - Free zip code lookup and zip code database download.
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| How the eQSL.cc database is structured and is different from LOTW |
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Fundamentally Different Purposes
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The Electronic QSL Card Centre (eQSL.cc) was designed in 1998 to mimick the traditional QSL card exchange.
That is, after a QSO, you send a QSL card to your QSO partner, and s/he (hopefully) sends one to you.
The Logbook of the World (LOTW) system was designed in 2001 as a way to reduce labor in the ARRL DXCC award management.
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How Incoming eQSLs Are Distributed
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The minimum number of data elements that must be present in an ADIF log is very small. (see ADIF Spec)
You can describe a QSO in ADIF using Callsign, QSO Date and Time, Band or Frequency, and Mode.
Thus, when N5UP sends WN4WWX an eQSL, it only needs to send those 5 pieces of data in order to have it received by WN4WWX.
The way we distribute an eQSL to the proper user is CALLSIGN + QSO DATE/TIME.
During registration, we ask for the Start and End dates for that callsign at that QTH.
So if WN4WWX is present at a particular QTH from January 1, 2000 to December 31, 2020, and an eQSL arrives for March 1, 2005, we know exactly where to put it.
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Multiple Identical Callsigns
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What then are we to do if there are multiple accounts with the same callsign that match the incoming eQSL Callsign + QSO Date/Time?
This presents an impossible situation, and we must avoid it. So we attempt to prevent registration of a callsign that already exists in the system for the same date/time range.
In the past, government agencies stipulated that all QSOs must be logged, and that radio operators operating away from their licensed QTH must specify /(call area) or /P or /M for those operations away from the home QTH.
These rules were relaxed long ago, and people often operate mobile without specifying /anything.
This poses a huge problem for us, because it can mean overlapping time periods for the same callsign, and we do not know where to put the incoming eQSL.
If this goes unchecked, it can mean someone operating far from their home QTH but receiving award credit for a totally different grid square, county, or even state.
This must be avoided, and we do so to the extent our automated system can catch these and prevent them from existing!
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The Simple Solution
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From our standpoint, the simple solution is:
- If operating away from the home QTH, always sign /M or /P or /(call area) on the air, so that your QSO partner will send the eQSL to that callsign, not your base callsign.
Then create an account for each /(call area) or /M or /P and only upload your portable or mobile QSOs into that Outbox. You should see an Inbox with the correct incoming eQSLs automatically.
- If you use the same callsign from different QTHes, create each QTH as a separate account, and ensure that the Start/End date/times do not overlap.
So, it is OK for N5UP to overlap N5UP/5, but it is NOT OK for N5UP at one QTH to overlap N5UP at another QTH.
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A Different eQSL Design For Each QTH
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Since eQSL.cc was designed first as an electronic QSL card exchange, it follows that you would want each QTH to have an eQSL design that reflects that QTH.
It might have a different graphic, showing that QTH, or mobile stations may want to have a picture of the vehicle.
At the very least the new eQSL graphic should show the proper QTH in the text, for instance grid square, state or province, county, oblast, JCC/JCG, etc.
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How LOTW Manages the Problem
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Since LOTW was designed from the ground up to be merely an award processor, they designed their system to require reciprocal log records to match, or they remain invisible to either side.
This means that if N5UP is operating mobile and sends a log record to WN4WWX, and WN4WWX sends a log record to N5UP, the LOTW system will find that match regardless of the QTH of either station.
However, this also means that without BOTH log records in the system, the logs will not match, and nobody gets credit.
So if N5UP operates on the air as N5UP but uploads logs into the N5UP/5 account, the other station will not know this and will send to N5UP who will NOT receive the log!
Also LOTW does not have the requirement for different graphics for each QTH, because they are not a graphical card exchange.
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Highly Mobile Stations
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We have had several county hunters on our Advisory Board, and they have made it clear since the early days that we need to have an easier way for mobile stations to log contacts without manually creating a new account every time they go driving around.
As a result of this, and the addition of some new fields in the ADIF specification (see MY_ fields) to allow overriding the grid, state, county, and city where that QSO was operated, we have been developing a new feature.
The new feature will allow Dynamic Account Creation when an eQSL is transmitted with those override fields.
This dynamic account creation is non-trivial and creates a new set of problems, not the least of which is that we want our users to be able to manage potentially hundreds or even thousands of QTH account as easily as possible.
Each account created on-the-fly during ADIF upload will have its own login, and the graphic from the base account will be copied in and should be modified by the user as soon as possible to reflect the new QTH.
Dynamic Account Creation has been under development for several years now, and is a high priority.
When it is available for testing, you will see big announcements in Site News!
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