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General: Station Log Information

What information is traditionally contained in a station log? [G2D09]

A. Date and time of contact
B. Band and/or frequency of the contact
C. Call sign of station contacted and the signal report given
D. All of these choices are correct

When keeping logs for your station, you need certain pieces of information for the contact, or QSO to be considered valid.  If you don’t have the correct information in your log, when you go to confirm this contact with the other party, the information may not match, and the QSO might not be confirmed.  In a contest this can cost you points, or you might miss out on an award, or even something as simple as a QSL card.

At a bare minimum, you need the date and time of the contact, in UTC or “zulu” time.  This is also known as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and is basically the “world reference” for time.  You need the band, preferably the exact frequency (from which you can infer what band it was.)  You also need the call sign of the operator you contacted, and an additional piece of information that you (and they) can confirm as having been received (and sent.)  In contest settings this is usually a signal report.  Often times it will include other information relevant to the contest, like a location or sequence number.

Therefore, the answer is D. All of these choices are correct.  Now obviously you can record as much station log information about a QSO as you’d like, including recording the whole thing(!) But at a minimum you need the information outlined above.

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