I’m working on a solution to improve the logging experience for WOTA. There are currently two options for logging:
- Logging individual contacts via the WOTA site.
- Logging a group of contacts using the SOTA CSV import facility.
I’ve used both of these, but the restriction of using the SOTA CSV logging facility is that you have to manually edit the file to replace SOTA references with WOTA references if you want to use it to log WOTA (i.e. non SOTA summit) contacts. It works, and is still more convenient than using the WOTA site logging for lots of contacts, but it is clunky.
I don’t like using the WOTA site directly to record contacts purely because I upload all my contacts to QRZ.com and clublog websites, as well as store log files locally. If I use the WOTA site directly then it means I effectively have to log everything twice.
For SOTA logging I have used Fast Log Entry in the past extensively. This software is designed to reduce the number of keystrokes required to enter a log file, but it is a Windows only application and still requires CSV file editing if you use it for WOTA logging. It can teach good logging discipline and you can actually write your log files in FLE format directly, even if using a paper and pencil (which I do mostly).
An alternative to FLE is the web-based application Simple Fast Log Entry. That solves the windows-only issue, but it has a number of bugs and issues. I’ve been in contact with the developer and have slowly been making edits on my own source-code fork to make logging contacts for WOTA a lot easier.
Here’s a screenshot:
With my version you can specify a WOTA activation and references, including S2S contacts, directly. When you use Download CSV the created file can be imported directly using the WOTA CSV import facility and there is no messing with SOTA/WOTA references, it just works. It also still knows about WOTA to WOTA or WOTA to SOTA S2S within the Lake District.
It is almost at the stage where it can be hosted and used, I’ll try and get that done over Christmas.
Regards, Mark.