One of the things that really jumped out at me as a new Amateur Radio Operator was the absolute need in many cases for computerized assistance while operating. I have no idea how many people keep logs on their computer, but I bet it’s a lot considering the decades long practice of QSL cards has turned electronic in many cases via mediums like eQSL and Logbook of the World (LoTW). Don’t get me wrong, I love the computer angle of being an Amateur Operator, but I’m also eager and not very patient to get going, and therein lies the rub.
Most of these computerized tools use callsign lookup sources such as QRZ.com, HamQTH.com, eSQL, LoTW and others. I’d almost argue there’s too many of them, but I’ll hold that judgement for later. These sites, especially the most popular QRZ.com, rely on database incremental and full dumps from the FCC to stay current.
Now, just based upon my brief time thus far in the hobby, this gets problematic at times. The FCC it seems regularly misses dumps. Things happen, I’m not judging or blaming anyone, but when those daily dumps are missed logbooks and lookups get, well, difficult. This happened to me just this week.
On Tuesday April 3rd I was issued my vanity callsign, NØEHX. I applied for it exactly one day after my initial ticket was issued for KEØQMF, the mouthful callsign I was issued automatically. I waited my 18 days and finally got it. Then…. the FCC missed the April 3rd incremental DB dump. So, sites like QRZ that most loggers depend upon missed the update as well. So, NØEHX returns, well nothing in most logging programs. Now, you might say who cares Eric, the FCC is what matters, and I completely agree, but here’s what happened for the rest of this week.
W1ABC de NØEHX, I have you 5×9, how copy
NØEHX de W1ABC, say your call again pls
W1ABC de November Zero Echo Hotel X-Ray
Did you say November Zero Echo Hotel X-Ray?
… and so on
I think most have become so reliant on computerized loggers that when they enter a call if it doesn’t “come up” then they must have copied it wrong. This went on for Tuesday night, Wednesday… and then I finally gave up and stopped operating. It was too frustrating, and I didn’t dare do any DX during this time (which also caused me to miss our on a great copy on a station in Croatia on 40m). However, there’s a way to help, at least a little, in the interium.
If you’ve stumbled upon this article because you too have been hit by this slight inconvenience then there’s a trick that can help you, at least a little bit, while you wait. Login to your QRZ account, click on your callsign in the top menu bar, and choose Edit (your callsign) in the menu. Then, scroll down to the Alias section, seen below.
Enter your new callsign into that Alias field and submit it. Now, your “old” call sign will have an alias of your “new” callsign. So, searches in QRZ for your new callsign will return the record for your old, noting that it has an alias of your new callsign. Confused? Try it yourself and you’ll understand.
Now you might say, that’s a hack, and it totally is. However, now most dare I say decent loggers will find your call if they search QRZ. There are some loggers that do not trigger on the alias field via the QRZ XML service, but many do. I found that once I did this most of my issues operating went away. Very few endless passing of my callsign exchanges happened after I did the above.
Note: QRZ automatically updates your account once it receives the update from the FCC, so out of concern that this method might mess that up, I contacted their support. They assured me that doing this would not harm the automatic update once it finally happens. Your mileage may vary, but that’s what they told me.
Hope this helps someone else. There’s no real fix for this when it happens. It is NOT the fault of QRZ or any other amateur radio website or service. They can’t really fix it and just have to wait, just as we do. Eventually the FCC will catch up, or they will post their “full DB” update on Sunday and all will be right in the world again. Until then, try the Alias trick and see if that helps you.
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