Here is an example of what I was referring to during the podcast. This happens frequently while chasing DX due to so many DX stations being non-resident’s. I contacted and logged HC1MD/2. He is in Ecuador but his home call is NE8Z and his QSL info is used as his address. So when I log it, it shows up as USA. This impact’s award chasing and contest points. It would be better if the PREFIX determined what country / entity gets logged by default. It is a minor to major pain (depending on when you notice something isn’t right) to go in and change it manually and happens more frequently than you may imagine. This of course would include those with a portable /, but as long as it’s logged as a prefix it should default to that. It is far more rare to get the occasional KH6 or KL7 in the lower 48 and have to fix in reverse, than A LOT of common DX that is out there daily.
@WC5B thanks for the extra detail and huge thanks for your support!
Our location lookup today looks at a lot of things, automatically:
- The location from the spot, especially POTA, if they are in a park
- The users Home location in WRL if they have an account
- QRZ lookup, if the user doesn’t have account
- The prefix, if WRL & QRZ fails
In general, I would imagine that options 1 - 3 are usually more accurate than the prefix alone, and we get a lot more data than just country - we also get state, grid square, etc.
I think there is a way we can enhance our location lookup to handle this situation though - we will think of some options!
Thank you for your reply. It is actually the other way around when it comes to DX entities. Operator’s literally can not use their home call’s so the prefix is by far king, at least for DX. You can’t use home call’s in DX land (99% of the time and the other times hams will use a DX/Prefix in the FEW FEW countries that have reciprocal agreements). USA this concept works fine, however, outside the US, it logs incorrectly a lot. During focused dx’ing / contesting, a couple times a day due to this easily. Many DX stations, especially “the good stuff” out of Europe is very often European or American ham’s activating those locations, and DX does not go by license info data, but is entered by a user individually with whatever they want, normally their home address. So it would work far better if it was 1. POTA / SOTA 2. QRZ if in the USA 3. Prefix. (WRL location would be a wildcard here but very rarely would I expect it to differ from 2 or 3.) I can think of 2 or 3 times in 30 years I worked a DX call outside of their prefix. All were Western European’s visiting the US and they all signed their call’s as W1/ or W2/ etc. However, I have had to edit the WRL log often. 2-3 times in one weekend alone compared to the 30 years. lol The funny thing is that QRZ even understands and logs it as the DX by the prefix. LOL Regardless of the contact info address. Anyway, keep up the great work and hopefully there is a solution. I understand it might be lower on the totem pole of things to get to.
Hmm interesting!
This is definitely something we will take a look at, we just have to be really careful anytime we update the location lookup, since it has several steps!
To me, it seems like QRZ saving the QSL location as the main location isn’t correct, they should ideally have separate addresses for that - but it is good to know that in some cases QRZ lookup may return incorrect addresses because of that.
The good news is that more and more hams are signing up for WRL, so the data is continuously getting more accurate, and more database matches are found in our own internal database without the QRZ lookup.
Perhaps if there is no match found in WRL database, which would be accurate, and it is an non-US callsign, then we look at the prefix, as you suggested.
Thanks for taking all the time to elaborate, this makes sense!
I’m going to chime in here as I almost never operate from the address on my US FCC license, and QRZ forces US hams to use the address on their license as their primary address in QRZ. Thus most of my qso partners have the wrong location for my station because their logger blindly assumes I’m operating from the address QRZ forces into my profile.
I’ve started using WRL precisely because it grabs locations from POTA spots. That helps a lot when doing POTA
Determining the location of the station I’m contacting and logging it is a hazardous game. We often don’t really know where they are and we are just guessing.
—SOTA summits are often on county lines and sometimes on state and country lines. Which one is the station actually in?
—POTA parks often cover multiple counties, grids, and states. Which one is the station actually in?
We can guess but not know for sure. And then we log incorrect information. You may think you worked a country or state or grid, but you didn’t really.
How much does it matter? I’m not sure. If you want formal confirmation for, eg, an ARRL award the other station needs to properly specify their location They should know and log where they where, they should know best
One philosophy is that I should “only log what I hear to be most accurate” but that doesn’t satisfy the desires of most hams to quickly know and log what grids, counties, cq zones, itu zones, states, and countries their contacts are in.
Perhaps there could be options on how WRL should determine the location of the other station. Perhaps there could be some on-the-fly choice - use the call prefix, use the spot, use qrz, use nothing but what I type in manually, etc. “Yo! their prefix country and their QRZ country don’t agree what should be logged?”
Just some food for thought.
73, KA3ZPH
Yes, from the prospective of a US Ham regarding contacting US Hams, this is completely true and WRL as is does an amazing job with it. It is awesome how it knows what to do with POTA ect. However, what I am talking about is international DX. When you are at a POTA park in another state, it’s awesome that WRL will make the changes by default. However, if someone moved to another state or is traveling, and not on a POTA site or spot, WRL will of course not know that, which is understandable. All I am saying here is that is not how QRZ works for DX International stations and many of those just have contact addresses not associated with their operation sites. It LITERALLY is ILLEGAL for them to be using the International DX callsign IN the USA. (If we are talking about an example of QRZ displaying a US Address, as it could be another country also). The rules are not the same from US State to US State as they are from Country to Country. EVEN QRZ still logs the CALLSIGN as the DX entity, and does not base it on the address in IT’S OWN database! LOL If you check the callsign I used as an example on QRZ, you will see just to the top right of the address it has it tagged as it’s DXCC country and it logs it as such in it’s own logbook. This is why I am saying that it is FAR more rare to log an occasional VE, KH6, or KL7 in the lower 48, than you would ever see a legit case of a foreign call sign being used outside of it’s country which almost always is illegal, and when it does happen and is legal, those stations will add a Prefix/Callsign of where they are.