Updated: 23 November 2023

This application note is intended to help DX4WIN users who are chasing the Parks on the Air® (POTA) award.

TL;DR - start with step #7 below. If something goes wrong, restore your logbook and start again.

Table of Contents

What is POTA

Parks on the Air® (POTA) is described on the website as follows:

Parks on the Air® (POTA) started in early 2017 when the ARRL's National Parks on the Air special event ended. A group of volunteers wanted to continue the fun beyond the one-year event, and thus, POTA was born.

POTA has recently started issuing USA park numbers that are 5-digits long, i.e. K-10001. To be consistent, I updated the DX4WIN Custom Award database to expand all existing USA 4-digit park numbers to 5-digits. Thus, the first one is now:

K-00001=Acadia National Park [ME]

This change will require you to run the "Check Custom Awards" Multiple QSO operation on your logbook. This only has to be done once.

The steps are described below. You must follow all these instructions in order to convert the QSOs in your logbook to recognize the 5-digit park numbers for USA. Before making any changes to your log, I recommend reading through all the steps once to familiarize yourself with the process.

Do not update your Custom Awards database before starting this (Help | Check for Updates). While it might be OK to do so, you will not be able to get a copy of your original POTA QSO statistics. You will update the Custom Award database when instructed below.

This first group of instructions is meant to take a snapshot of your current POTA statistics which can be compared after the conversion is done.

  1. In the QSO window, use the F8 key to filter only POTA QSOs by selecting POTA in the Custom award drop-down. Also select '*' as the Custom Award value. This selects only QSOs with valid (non-empty) reference numbers (Custom Award value). If any step later on asks whether to use the current filter, answer Yes.
     
  2. In the QSO window, click on Filter | Count and write down the number somewhere. This is the number of POTA QSOs in your log that have a valid reference number, and that potentially will be checked/converted.

  3. Generate a summary report for all your POTA contacts. You can use this report to compare to your POTA status after the conversion.

    In the QSO window, click on the Reports menu. Under Award, select Custom from the bottom of the list. When the list of custom awards appears, double-click on POTA/Parks on the Air.
     
  4. The Report Generator box should come back up. Under Report/Action, select Summary. On the right-hand side, ensure that all three boxes are checked (Band, Mode, Mixed). It should look like this:

    Click OK and you should have a report that looks like this. You can right-click on the window to either print it or write it to a file.

  5. Now Exit DX4WIN

This next set of instructions is the actual log update to match the new Custom Award database.

  1. Make a copy of your log file (<callsign>.DXL) found in the SAVE directory. Put it someplace safe, like a USB thumb drive. Just in case something goes wrong, you will still have a copy of your original log.
     
  2. Start DX4WIN
     
  3. Update the DX4WIN Custom Award database by clicking on Help | Check for Updates, found on the main DX4WIN menu. DX4WIN will automatically restart.
     
  4. Use F8 again to filter your log for only POTA QSOs with valid reference numbers (see #1 above). Note that the "Custom award value" field in your logbook will appear blank for the selected QSOs. That is because the POTA reference numbers in your logbook do not yet match the POTA references numbers in the Custom Award database.

    It is important to use the F8 filter for two reasons:
    • Check Custom Awards (step #10 below) will ignore all other Custom Awards except for POTA, i.e. it will not check other awards.
       
    • DX4WIN will remove the Custom Award name from a QSO if the Custom Award value is empty. Using the F8 filter avoids that problem because it selects only QSOs with non-empty Custom Award values.
  5. Now you need to check your custom award(s) to perform the conversion. This function will update your logbook. All the POTA QSOs with USA stations that previously used 4-digit reference numbers will change to 5-digit reference numbers.

    In the QSO window, QSO | Multiple QSO operations | Check Custom Award

    You should see a pop-up box that looks like this:

    The number of QSOs to check should match the number from Step #2 above.
     
  6. Click on Yes. You should now see a window that looks like the following:

    You should not see any messages other than, "# Custom Award values were converted."

    Notice that the number of Custom Award values that were converted may be less than the number that were checked (selected). In this particular case, there were non-USA POTA in the F8 selection. Those do not need any conversion.

  7. Generate another summary report like that described in steps #3-4 above. It should match (or be very close to) the one you generated earlier.
     
  8. The final step is to remove all the new error messages from the "Notes for this QSO" field of your updated POTA QSOs. DX4WIN adds a message like this to each QSO if the conversion was successful: 
    AWDERR: Awd=POTA AwdV=K-3023 Msg=Award converted

    Use F8 to filter only your POTA QSOs (the same as in step #1 above), then:

    QSO | Multiple QSO Operations | Remove Custom Award error messages

    The number of error messages removed should equal the total number of POTA QSOs that were converted (see #11 above).

Please let the webmaster know if you have any questions or run into any problems.