Managing DXCC Credits
When the ARRL's DXCC desk approves a QSL card or LotW confirmation you've submitted, you are granted a DXCC Credit for the entity, band, and mode specified on the card or in the LotW confirmation; the DXCC Credit also specifies the callsign and QSO date specified on the card or LotW confirmation. Since it computerized in 1991, the DXCC desk has created a database record for each DXCC Credit granted; the ARRL assigns each DXCC Credit a unique Credit Number. Over the past several years, the ARRL has expanded its LotW web site to enable ops to view their DXCC credits online. DXKeeper exploits this access to your DXCC Credits to
- ensure consistency between your logged QSOs and already-granted DXCC credits
- automatically update your logged QSOs to reflect the grant of new DXCC credits
This is accomplished by linking each DXCC Credit to a logged QSO. The process involves 4 steps:
Download your DXCC Credits from the ARRL web site, reporting any that are newly granted or modified since the last time you downloaded your DXCC Credits
Analyze DXCC Credits that have not yet been linked to a logged QSO, reporting those that
exactly match a logged QSO and thus could be automatically linked
- don't exactly match any logged QSO
are duplicates of another DXCC Credit
Automatically link DXCC Credits and QSOs that exactly match, setting each QSO's QSL RCVD or LotW QSL RCVD item to V (if it's not already set to V)
Manually link DXCC Credits and QSOs that don't exactly match; inexact matches are typically required because a DXCC Credit's date and/or callsign have been incorrectly entered, but occasionally because a DXCC Credit's band and/or mode have been incorrectly entered
Depending upon how many DXCC Credits you've been granted, initially linking your current DXCC Credits to your logged QSOs will take some time and effort. DXCC Credits generated from LotW confirmations are generally accurate, but ~25% of the DXCC Credits generated from submitted QSL cards specify erroneous QSO Begin times or erroneous QSO Callsigns that prevent automatic linking. Once these have been dealt with, you need only download and link DXCC Credits when the DXCC desk notifies you that new DXCC credits have been granted, or that DXCC Credit errors you submitted have been corrected. The ARRL's new Online DXCC program should significantly improve the accuracy of DXCC Credits generated from submitted QSL cards.
Users with paper logbooks full of QSOs not yet entered into DXKeeper can optionally generate credit-only QSOs from un-linked DXCC Credits, a process that links each credit-only QSO to the DXCC Credit from which is was generated. While this will not populate DXKeeper with every QSO, it will populate DXKeeper with the QSOs needed to generate "DXCC credit granted" statistics consistent with the ARRL's DXCC statistics, immediately enabling the use of DXLab's automation for seeking out and confirming needed DXCC entities, entity-bands, and entity-modes.
Like award progress information, DXCC Credits are stored in their own section of your log file. Thus backing up your log will backup your DXCC credits along with your QSOs. You can easily move all of this information from one PC to another if desired.
Management Operations
Before using these capabilities, you must first specify your DXCC Account Number.
Other Topics
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