QRZ Operating Awards Preview -- UPDATE 1 December 2014

We have been hard at work keeping the work on the Awards program progressing here at QRZ!

There is still some behind-the-scenes work to be done before we can open up awards for issuance.

Today, however, we have pushed a new version of the Awards preview for your viewing pleasure.

Some changes include:

• State input normalization. From now on, all states entered into QRZ Logbook must be the proper 2-letter abbreviation.
  This will prevent future occurrences of the confirmed QSOs being ineligible for an award due to a mismatched state.
  Caveat: Existing incorrect QSOs (IE: a QSO entered with a state of "ARI" instead of "AZ" for Arizona) will still need to be corrected by whichever party entered the invalid data.
• Congratulations screen when award is 100% (Again, awards are not yet being issued during the preview)
• District of Columbia is now counted as Maryland for award credit.
• Antarctica is now considered part of "Oceania" for World Continents Award credit
• Tooltip wording added to make ineligible QSO errors more self-explanatory, so that you know how to resolve the issue.
• Leaderboard - You'll notice a "Rank" link on the menu bar that shows standings in the QRZ Logbook. These standings are updated nightly.
• Numerous small bug-fixes

We are still working on the awards full-steam, so please email me with any inconsistencies, anomalies, or "this-just-don't-works." This is still a work in progress, so I would greatly appreciate your feedback, and assistance identifying any issues you see in the Awards Preview! I may not respond to every email: alex@qrz.com

Thanks, and 73!

 

Great to hear this Alex !!

Love the improved details about the QSO error details - really helps a lot with getting records corrected that have errors.
Look forward to when the awards will be live...
Keep up the good work !!
73,
Paul K9PLG

 

Alex,
Looks great!
Two comments:
- Would be nice to have an extra pie chart (confirmed and unconfirmed) in the DX World
- Would be nice with the IOTA Award as well
/Benny SA5BYS

 

Hello Alex, and All at QRZ.com,

Thank you for your Hard Work with a Website that is Great to use as an Amateur Radio Operator.

Best 73 and Happy New Year 2015.

K2HAT Lee Hatfield

 

New Format works make sure that your contacts and you have just the 2 letter State correct.

Thanks
Ian

 

Thank you for the kind words Paul! I'm glad to hear that the error details "tooltip" is making it more intuitive! I definitely understand there's nothing more frustrating than being handed a grenade without the pin to fix it.

I for one, love "eye-candy" -- this is why I am so excited with the interactive maps. I'm not sure if the real-estate available will allow for adding more pie charts (we already have plans for the unused space) but if it proves to be free we may consider something like this!

As far as the IOTA award, We do have plans for expanding upon the initial 4 awards at some point after initial roll-out.

Thanks!

Thank you Lee!

 

This goes beyond the 2-letter state, really. If you're looking at the DX World Award, the DXCC you enter for a QSO must end up matching the DXCC the other party enters for themselves as well, same with grid and continent.

Essentially, a "gold star confirmation" can be achieved with date/time (+/- 30 minutes), mode, band, and callsign matches, however, for awards eligibility, they must ALSO match for that awards criteria.

Thanks Ian!

 

QRZ is the best. I use it every day, but I think there is some glitch in the system still as far as the states being entered incorrectly. According to the awards analysis I had numerous contacts that were disallowed because I had entered the state correctly but the other guy had entered his state as "WV". I called up my close friend KA8MNO and had him manually go through his log. We had 7 confirmed QSO's 2 unconfirmed. Of the 7 confirmed 4 were disallowed because of the wrong state issue. KA8MNO says each one was entered the same way. We can't figure out what happened. They appear to be entered correctly on both ends and all of his counted toward the award.

The other 20 or so that were disallowed I have checked my entry and their state is correct. The information came from their original QRZ profile. In other words I look up the call sign on QRZ and click log new contact. Their info is already there I can't see how it could be incorrect. If a station says he is in NY and his info says NY, when he confirms how does the errant info get in there? Each of the states except for one shows that they entered WV as their state.

Hope this is a help in getting the system straightened out. Too good of a thing this QRZ to let a bug creep in

 

I have looked and can verify this anomaly! This doesn't affect everyone, or even all records, so the chances of me even seeing it without you bringing my attention to it are slim. Thank you for the report, this is EXACTLY the kind of feedback I'm looking for! The more eyes on it now, the less chance of having any kinks when we launch the awards entirely.

I'll investigate a fix for this. Thanks again!

 

Is there a way to bulk edit the state information?

Charlie, K0LAF

 

Alex same thing here... I get this notification on this QSO - "2014-09-21 18:48:00 K7DF K2MIJ AZ Ari" - It states the QSO cannot be confirmed as I have entered the correct state abbreviation as AZ but the other Op has entered it as Ari....I went back and checked and he has his state as AZ not the "Ari" the error flag states...

Tnx again for all the work on the logbook...

73,
Jim K2MIJ

 

Here's a good one for you. I had a QSO in 2013 with a guy who lived in Colorado at the time. He moved to Arizona this year so my QSO with him is now showing up as an error since it's apparently comparing my 2013 QSO with his current address.

Beyond this it's looking better all the time.

 

See the attached screenshot. When you see the error, and you hover over the "How do I fix this" button you get a tooltip that explains the problem. As you see, you entered "AZ" for his state, but he entered "Ari." He needs to edit his QSO with you and correct his state there.

In the future, this won't happen because future QSOs are corrected as they're added (or rejected altogether) -- however, for the existing QSOs, they will need to be corrected.

 

Can you give me a date of the QSO and his callsign so that I can look?

 

No such feature exists, but if it's a large logbook, and you're correcting all of YOUR state, I may be able to do it for you. Contact me and give me the details. My email address is in the original post.