Mike,
I’m not a programmer, so I can’t speak to the technical details. I do know that the demands on the LoTW staff are considerable—including routine maintenance, programming changes to support additional awards, server maintenance, etc.
There are also administrative requirements for new awards that include printing, mailing, record keeping, etc. With a limited staff, these considerations are also a factor.
That said, I fully support a VHF/UHF Century Club “Rover” Award from the AARL. Anything that incentivizes and rewards rovers is a great idea. All of us benefit from rovers, and they make contests more exciting too.
With any organization (or proposal) there will always be things that we might like to change—but you can’t change an organization from the outside. Only by being a member, and being active can you affect change.
Wish I had your programming skills. I have trouble keeping my own log straight! :-)
73,
Les Rayburn, N1LF Maylene, AL EM63nf AMSAT #38965, ARRL Life Member, CVHS Life Member, SVHF Member
On Apr 22, 2019, at 5:47 PM, Mike Diehl diehl.mike.a@gmail.com wrote:
I fully support a VUCC award for Rovers, administered by the ARRL. But everyone should be aware that would require considerably more programming changes to LoTW. These are not trivial factors.
I’m curious why this would mean considerable programming changes unless there’s something inherently wrong with LoTW. It literally takes me <10 lines of code to come up with a list of all squares someone has operated from by parsing the ADIF output from a LoTW query, this becomes a one liner with “SELECT DISTINCT” when you have direct access to the DB.
TBH, it seems more like ARRL not keeping up with the times. Roving is more popular than ever and they didn’t even have the foresight to create such an award during the great grid challenge.
The ARRL, where you can get credit for working an op at a specific building or pile of rocks in the ocean but zilch for actually going to those places. And yes that’s part of why all of those “we want you back!” emails get sent to the bit bucket.
73, Mike Diehl W8LID/VE6LID