Please forgive me if this has already been discussed. I have looked a few times when coming here. My luck, this topic is covered one post down from where I’m putting it and I never saw it.
Anyway. Most of my POTA is hunting at home. When I log all of my contacts, then upload to QRZ, I find that a number of them have the wrong county, grid square, or state. It’s almost always one or more of these three items that are wrong.
Thankfully, QRZ tells me when it doesn’t match so the contact can’t be used for awards, but it sure is annoying having to change it.
Is there something I can do to make sure that it logs them in the right state, grid square, and thus county so I don’t have to keep fixing these logs?
I’m positive it has to do with the activation not being in their home county, grid square, or state. I am pulling from QRZ for the activator’s info, but obviously want the park county, grid, and state to be what is logged.
I hope I’m a little clearer than mud on the issue I’m having. Thanks to the great team here at Ham2K. I love polo logger.
At first sight, I think what’s happening is that PoLo does NOT include any county information in the logs we produce. And we might (I’d have to check in the logs) use the grid and state from a park reference if you hunt someone.
When you upload anything to QRZ, they use their own database to fill the missing details.
So if you work me KI2D while I’m activating a park in Florida, when you upload the ADIF file has no county, but QRZ assumes I’m in my home QTH in Sullivan county.
The same problem happens when I, as the activator, upload my logs to QRZ. It does not include the county, so QRZ takes a guess.
But some other operators might in fact put the county of their parks in their logs, so when it uploads it ends up not matching what QRZ guessed.
Anyways, if you’d like to do some further testing and research, please write down your findings here in the forum!
Certainly. I’ll do my best to decipher what is actually taking place, and note anything I find here for you. Thanks for looking into this. I’m sure this will help everyone using your app.
Let me try to understand this.
Firstly, State, County, GridSquare values are not used for confirmation/QSLs at all in any system I know of.
Have I misunderstood this part?
They may be used in contests and be a part of the scoring, but for Amateur Radio QSLing, they are not part of the equation.
eQSL will object to you submitting a log with a mismatch between your selected account gridsquare and the QSO gridsquare being uploaded but this does not play into the final QSL. If you create a new account with a different grid, then it will go thru.
Some OPs, in fact, create a new profile for every park they activate. That is extremely tiresome in my view. But eQSL offers gridsquare awards so that’s their business.
Secondly, if there is a mismatch between the value you have in your log and the value in the counterparty’s log. The counterparty log wins, there is no way you can make me move my QRZ location details.
Thirdly, any awards you seek can only be based on what you collect from the counterparty. Just because you think someone is in a gridsquare you do not currently have, if the counterparty gridsquare differs from this, their gridsquare stands as the authority and you cannot change that.
QRZ as a case in point will QSL your QSOs but will only register the counterparty details for everything other than callsign, Band, Mode and TIME +/- 15 minutes
POTA is an Amateur Radio activity devoted to portable operations where the activator ONLY submits logs and the Hunter gets credit for whatever the activator has given them.
There is nothing in POTA which promotes a QSL.
Any attempt to QSL a park activator QSO has nothing to do with POTA.
Could there be some confusion about POTA being something other than this?
Alan
That is of course true - but in this case, you are at the total mercy of the activator’s submission as far as location details are concerned. Nothing you do will change that. Unless an award system permits YOUR (hunter) record for the award submission, you may still be disappointed.
Alan
By way of comparison, when I submit a SOTA chaser log, there is no QSL. If I, the Chaser, say I worked you on SOTA summit XYZ, then that’s it. No checking takes place. I just tick a box to say this is true and correct.
If I later pay to receive an award from SOTA, that’s fine. It’s all based on what I say.
For gridsquares? for “Worked all Counties”? I don’t know who hands out awards based on what I alone claim.
I suspect it is based firstly on a legitimate QSL, THEN on the counterparty’s location details.
Finally, many POTA activators only ever submit their logs to POTA. It goes nowhere else.
And if submitted to LOTW, they will pull the counterparty’s details from their station certificate details, not a park reference.
I think this attempt to get awards from PoLo logging is extremely fraught and unreliable at best.
That’s why on FT8 there is a specific column for whether the counterparty is an LOTW user. I would guess that many OPs choose not to work you at all if you are not part of the program they favour.
Alan
I’m specifically talking about QRZ only. That’s where grid square, county, and state matter for awards.
I log all of my hunter contacts, upload, and have about 66% confirmation on QRZ, which is great. Then both myself and the activator get credit for the qsl for our awards. However, if their grid/state/county is different because neither of us will get credit for the grid square, state, and county awards.
The only discrepancy is those three fields, and they do matter for those awards on QRZ.
I don’t mess with eqsl or lotw, both are beyond tiring like you said.
So Adam, when you try to log the gridsquare of their park, you have no control over whether they do the same. It’s most likely they log and leave their details as per their QRZ setup.
Are you finding that you can change your PoLo log from their QRZ lookup details to their current park details and THEN get a match for an award? I can’t see that happening more than extremely infrequently.
I don’t know anyone other park activator who sets their QRZ details differently per activation … but you are finding that to be the case?
Alan
Also Adam,
For a QRZ Gridsquare and Counties award you need only 100 matches. They are a couple of the first awards any QRZ member receives. Maybe Friendship is first.
I have over 1,200 grids and nearly 500 counties. These awards come to you without really trying.
They are pretty relaxed awards. Just not sure they are worth doing a lot of log fiddling to get them.
Alan
Truth be told, I thought that Polo was adding their grid location to the activation based on the park information. I totally forgot that I can set it, but I usually just go in and let it set my grid automatically by my location. It’s obviously different in each park.
That said, it’s at least a handful that I need to correct after I upload each log because my log won’t match theirs for that parameter.
The way I find and correct this is in the QRZ award area. It will show QSO’s that didn’t match, and aren’t able to be used for an award. I always manually correct it to match, because that may affect the award for the other operator too.
So yes, there’s some discrepancy going on because they can choose to set or not set their grid when they are activating, and I did forget about that part of the equation.