The ARRL publishes the full list of LoTW users!
After some 14 years keeping the users list of its Logbook of the World confidential, the ARRL finally changed its mind and published this long awaited list on July 29th, 2017!
It is publicly available at this address: https://lotw.arrl.org/lotw-user-activity.csv
Even better, this lists includes the last upload date for each user. It should be typically updated once a week.
This new policy of the ARRL has the following effects on my projects:
1. Unofficial LoTW users list
Its last release before the ARRL publishes the full list included 104,323 calls, while the ARRL's first list included 108,204 calls. This means that 96.4 % of all calls could be found (by far more than I expected)! A big thank you to all those who helped reaching this outstanding result!
The 3881 additional calls found in the ARRL's list were added in the 30 July release of my list, which is now be generated from the ARRL's one.
This means that the collection of individual LoTW reports is no more relevant, considering that all users who started using the system more then one week ago are already known and the brand new ones will automatically appear in the next release of the ARRL's list, within one week.
To avoid breaking compatibility with software using my list, the format of all files available on my site was kept unchanged, with a small exception: in the lotw.txt file (full list with 5 calls on each row), useless white spaces at the end of each line were removed and start/stop dates of LoTW use by a few stations can no more be included.
I guess most software developers using my list will now modify their programs to use directly the ARRL list, as it includes the last upload date for each call. I will continue providing my list in all current formats for at least some months (till the end of 2017?). Developers using any of those files are encouraged to get in touch with me to let me know about their intentions, especially if they would like to continue using the existing files (lotw.txt or lotw1.txt) for a longer period.
I guess that at least the list sorted by country should remain of interest for those wanting to quickly know who uses LoTW in their country or in a given rare DXCC entity, so those pages should be continue to be updated each time the ARRL releases a new list.
2. RXCLUS software
All versions till 8.5g of my DX-Cluster telnet software used the lotw1.txt file available on my site. Using the ARRL's file required some changes in the code, as it's format is different.
Version 8.5h, released on August 27th, 2017, uses the new ARRL's file. It can display the last upload date for each user and ignore those who did not upload any log for a long time (configurable between 1 month and 10 years).
Check my download page of you are interested in this version.