Your Location

What Is A Location?

A location is a place you operate from. You describe it once and pick it when you log, whether that is at home, portable, or activating a park.

Why Does It Matter?

Every contact you log copies your location onto it. That is what makes your log worth keeping years later, because a QSO carries where you were when you made it rather than where you live now.

The location also provides the grid square used to calculate the distance between you and the stations you work.

Where Does My First Location Come From?

QSLShack fills it in from your callsign when it can, and asks you to check it. If it cannot find one, it asks you to enter one.

Check it rather than accepting it. A license record shows a mailing address, which is not always where the antenna is.

What Do I Have To Enter?

The place itself. Everything else on the form is optional.

Radio and antenna are optional, and worth filling in for a portable station. A portable station is usually a different radio and a different antenna from the one at home.

A park, summit or island reference is optional. If this place has one, that reference travels onto every QSO you log from here.

What Updates By Itself?

The fields worked out from your grid square and your callsign. You do not enter those. They change when you change the grid square.

Can I Have More Than One?

Yes, and most operators do. Add a location for each place you operate from, and choose the right one when you log a contact.

A location you no longer use can be hidden rather than deleted, so the QSOs that reference it keep their history.

How Does A Location Relate To A Logbook?

A logbook can be given a default location. Contacts logged in that book use it unless you pick another, which saves choosing the same place every time.