ARRL and CQ Sign Agreement to Provide ARRL’s LoTW Support for CQ’s Awards:

(Hicksville, NY and Newington, CT - Jan. 24, 2012) – CQ Communications, Inc. (CQ) and ARRL – the national association for Amateur Radio, have signed an agreement to begin providing support for CQ-sponsored operating awards by the ARRL's Logbook of the World (LoTW) electronic confirmation system.. The agreement was announced jointly today by ARRL Chief Operating Officer Harold Kramer, WJ1B, and CQ Communications President Richard Ross, K2MGA.

CQ's awards will be the first non-ARRL awards supported by LoTW and will be phased in, beginning with the CQ WPX award. Additional CQ awards will follow. The ARRL’s LoTW system, an interactive database recording contacts between radio amateurs was created in 2003 and has been adopted by 47,500 radio “hams” worldwide. It already has records of 400 million contacts and grows weekly. The target date for beginning LoTW support for WPX is April 1, 2012. Amateurs will be able to use LoTW logs to generate lists of confirmed contacts to be submitted for WPX credit. Standard LoTW credit fees and CQ award fees will apply.

ARRL Chief Executive Officer David Sumner, K1ZZ, observed that this step gives radio amateurs throughout the world an inexpensive and convenient means of gaining credits toward CQ’s popular operating awards. “LoTW has significantly increased interest and participation in the ARRL’s DXCC, Worked All States and VUCC awards programs. We anticipate a similarly positive response to the addition of the CQ WPX award. Amateurs will be able to spend more time operating and less time chasing QSL cards.”

CQ President Richard Ross, K2MGA, said he is very pleased to be able to move forward with Logbook support for CQ awards. "We have had excellent results with electronic confirmations for several years," he said, "and I am glad that we are now able to begin expanding that convenience to those participants in our award programs who use Logbook of the World. We look forward to a smooth launch for WPX, and to the expansion of LoTW support to include the rest of our award programs as well."

ARRL (www.arrl.org) is the national association for Amateur Radio in the United States and publisher of its membership journal QST. CQ Communications, Inc. ( http://www.cqcomm.com/) is publisher of CQ Amateur Radio and several other magazines. There are currently over 700,000 Amateur Radio licensees in the USA and approximately 2.5 million worldwide.

To learn more go to http://www.arrl.org/logbook-of-the-world.

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