Sunday, January 23, 2022

Old logbooks and the power of LoTW

For ages in the back of my mind was the fact that I had old HRD log backups from 2007 - 2010 when I first became active on HF in ZL (New Zealand).

Recently the itch needed scratching, so I set about the process of getting these old logs into MacLoggerDX (my current logging application), and uploaded to LoTW.

Reading through some of the comments I made at the time was quite a trip down memory lane. Since these were all voice/SSB contacts well before FT8 ate the world (don't worry I use and enjoy it too along with PSK31 mostly), most contacts were turned into a good chat about something, sometimes I'd put a few notes about the QSO in the comments.

First problem is the current trial version of HRD would not successfully import the old backups. I was unable to find an installer for an older version anywhere..

The HRD backups are in Microsoft Access mdb format, and fortunately I have a full copy of Office 2010. I was able to export the log table as a CSV, pull that into Excel and fix up some of the info, and the HRD date/time formatting to match the ADIF format. I was then able to convert the CSV to ADIF using SM4XAS's CSV2ADIF Converter, and import that into MacLoggerDX under my ZL station callsign. From there I uploaded logs to LoTW (after setting up the cert and location, and temporarily reconfiguring MacLoggerDX operator callsign and LoTW location to match).

So that all worked, not knowing how many if any would get LoTW conformations I got a nice surprise when 16 out of 151 came back with matches:

Confirmed LoTW QSOs

The G stations I vaguely remember working, there were a couple more that didn't get conformations. First ever 50MHz/6m QSO via a very brief opening to the South Island, and the Georgia one I remember. But the "I can't believe that just happened QSO" on 80m SSB to Argentina using 100W and a low trapped dipole at the time didn't get a conformation even though it appears they are an LoTW user.

So I guess if you have some old logs laying around, clean them up and get them into LoTW, make them useful and see if there are some surprises waiting..