Up until not very long ago I didn’t use any logging software.   My log consisted of hand-written notes for SSB, and the log files from WSJT-X for digital.  I then posted the contacts on here to keep track.  It worked fine at first, but eventually I realized I had too many contacts to keep track of.  On top of that I was using a spreadsheet to manage QSL cards.  It worked, but it was very cumbersome to keep everything up to date.

Last week I started looking for electronic logging programs.  I wanted something to use with Linux if at all possible, and I found CQRLOG.  It took quite a while to get all my contacts loaded into the software but it was worth the time.  Once I got everything entered, I quickly saw the advantage.  I realized I’ve already had 160 contacts. Whoa.  When I started looking at some of the stats, I realized I had already contacted 10 countries.   Suddenly tracking QSL cards was way easier.

While I never used LOTW I decided this would be a good time.  LOTW in Ubuntu was not easy to setup.  The TQSL package in Ubuntu’s repositories for 16.04 were a joke, several versions out of date, and it crashed when attempting to update the configuration file to V11. My compiling skills are pretty much non-existent, and I ran into dependency errors that I have no clue how to resolve.   I found some luck installing the Windows version of TQSL with Wine, however that would mean CQRLOG wouldn’t be able to find TQSL and I’d have to deal with manually moving files around.  I finally found a compiled package, thanks to Kamal Mostafa’s launchpad (links at the end of this post).  I added that PPA and quickly had TQSL up and running.

Once I had certificates figured out I started uploading to LOTW.  I wasn’t expecting much based on the reviews I had read online, but out of the 160 contacts I have, 100+ were confirmed with LOTW in a matter of seconds.  Compare that to 60 contacts that were confirmed via QSL.  That also translated to 4 additional countries confirmed that I haven’t been able to confirm via QSL cards, getting my total confirmed countries up to 8.

Here are a few links that I found helpful:
CQRLOG
Kamal Mostafa’s PPA for TQSL