Hello Jay, I dread getting into this discussion because it will cause an avalanche of e-mail!
First of all, E-QSL's don't count for any meaningful awards. Too bad. It would be nice if they did. I still upload my logs every month faithfully year after year.
LOTW confirmations DO count for DXCC and WAS.
I spent a lot of time figuring out what it took to get satellite QSO's uploaded that actually were correct.
I don't know how many log programs actually export all the correct required info for satellite contacts. My program does not, so what I've been doing is this: Exporting the non-satellite contacts and satellite contacts separately. This way I can massage the ADIF file to make the satellite contacts correct for LOTW and E-QSL.
Satellite contacts need to have some additional information: 1. The "band" or "freq" should be the UPLINK frequency (your transmit). 2. Then you need "band_rx" <band_rx:4>70CM, for instance. 3. Then you need "sat_name" <sat_name:5>AO-51 for instance. 4. Then you need "prop_mode" <prop_mode:3>SAT for instance
Any contacts that match all the correct info will be confirmed as satellite QSO's.
These changes in the ADIF file are not hard to do unless you operate on a lot of different satellites then you have to do them in bunches. Recently all of my Sat QSO's are on mode J "V/U" so I just have to do a wholesale "add in" of the "band_rx" and "prop_mode" part on every QSO.
When I log the QSO's in the computer I put the sat name in the "comment" field. So when editing I do a wholesale change (search & replace) "comment" to "sat_name".
Not a big job, and it makes things work. I've got a few countries confirmed on LOTW for satellite QSO's but I have a feeling there are a lot of folks that uploaded their stuff without the required info, so the confirmations don't happen.
And I get a ton of "70CM" and "2M" FM E-QSL's which I know are not right.
Also, I went and exported all the AO-40 QSO's, fixed the file up, sent it in to LOTW and don't think I got a single confirmation on any of it. Too bad again!
Does this help ?
73, John, K6YK