Short answer: The Contest Analyzer FAQ states that a log can be checked only for a callsign in your account that is verified, so accounts are not shared. The pricing page repeats the point: logs can be checked for callsigns added and verified in your account. For you, this means a small piece of preparation before the contest weekend: add your callsign to your account, complete the verification, and make sure the callsign in your Cabrillo header is the one you mean. Do it early, not on the deadline evening.
What the site says
There are two short statements on the live pages. In the FAQ, under the question “Why must my callsign be verified?”, the answer reads: a log can be checked only for a callsign in your account that is verified, so accounts are not shared. On the pricing page, under “Which callsigns can I check?”, the answer is: logs can be checked for callsigns added and verified in your account, so accounts are not shared.
The reason is stated in the same sentence: accounts are not shared. A callsign identifies a licensed person or station, and a log belongs to that callsign. If anyone could upload a log under any callsign, the reports and the history built around a callsign would soon mean little. By binding checks to verified callsigns, the service keeps each account personal. The site does not go into more detail than this, and this article does not guess about the process. If you have a special situation, the contacts page is the right place to ask.
What this means in practice
Practically, you do three things. You create an account, you add your callsign to it and you complete the verification that the site asks for. After that, you upload a Cabrillo log for that callsign, choose the contest and let the checking run. The home page describes the next steps: the log is checked in the background, progress is shown live in My logs, and the report appears as soon as it is ready.
Because the verification is a condition for checking, it is best to do it before you need it. Contest weekends are busy, and you do not want to discover on the Sunday evening of a deadline week that a step is waiting for you. A good moment is the week before a contest, together with the other preparations. The article on the test week before a contest lists a few more things that are best done early.
Your Cabrillo header and your callsign
The Cabrillo file has a header line CALLSIGN that states which callsign the log belongs to. Open your file in a text editor and read it before you upload. Is it the callsign you operated with? If you used a special event call, a portable call with a prefix or suffix, or a club call, the header should show that call, as the contest rules require. The Cabrillo header guide describes the fields, and the article on common Cabrillo header mistakes shows how small errors in the header cause trouble.
Think also about the callsigns that you use for different purposes. An operator may have a home call, a call used abroad and a call used for a club station. For each of them, the question is whether the callsign is added and verified in the account, as the site says. If you are unsure how your own case is handled, ask before the contest and not after it.
Why this is good for you
At first sight, a verification step is an extra task. But it protects you in several ways. First, nobody else can upload a log under your callsign and see its results in your name. Second, the history of your logs belongs to you: the year-on-year comparison with your own logs uses logs that are tied to your callsign. Third, the FAQ says that your log and your callsign are never shown to other users, so what you upload stays in your account.
It also protects the quality of the service. A report is only useful if the log was checked for the right callsign. Mixing logs of different callsigns in one account would make the statistics and the comparison meaningless, and a shared account would make it impossible to say whose log is whose.
Verification also has a privacy side. The FAQ says plainly that your log and your callsign are never shown to other users. A verified account is therefore not a public profile; it is a personal workspace in which your logs and reports are kept for you. When you share results with friends or with a club, you decide what to share and how. A screenshot of a statistics chart or a short list of numbers is usually enough for a discussion, and your full log stays with you.
The same principle applies to the account itself: keep your sign-in details to yourself, in the same way as for any other service. Sharing an account would defeat the purpose of verifying a callsign, and it is the very thing that the site is designed to avoid.
Clubs, teams and helpers
The home page says that team and club members can add their logs to the same contest. Because accounts are not shared, each member needs his or her own account and a verified callsign. A club coordinator cannot upload logs on behalf of others under his own account. This is a point to explain to club members before the contest, so that nobody expects to hand a log to a friend who will upload it in his name.
If you wish to help a friend with his log, the best way is to sit together and let him use his own account, or to help him with the log file itself before he uploads it. See helping a friend check a contest log for suggestions. The log remains his, and so does the account.
Portable, special and visiting calls
Contest logs often involve calls that are not the plain home call of an operator: a portable call with a prefix or a suffix, a special event call, a call used by a contest group at a multi-operator station. The contest rules say which call must appear in the log and in the header, and you should follow them. For the check in Contest Analyzer, the point from the site is that a log can be checked for a callsign that is added and verified in your account. When your situation is not the plain one, think about it before the contest: which call will your Cabrillo file carry, and is it the one you have added?
The article about portable and mobile indicators explains how such calls look in a log and why they can confuse prefixes and zones. You do not need to solve every special case yourself. If it is unclear, ask in advance through the contacts page, and describe your situation in a few sentences.
A timeline for the week before the contest
A simple timeline makes the preparation easy. Seven days before the contest, create the account and add your callsign. Five days before, complete the verification and check that the account shows what you expect. Three days before, open your logger, export a short test Cabrillo file and read the header, especially the CALLSIGN line. Two days before, choose your plan using the information on the pricing page, and write the log deadline from the contests page in your calendar. The day before, close the preparation and do nothing new.
After the contest, the work is simple and fast: export, upload, review and download. Because the account and the verification were already done, you can start the check minutes after your last QSO, and the check runs in the background while you do other things.
A checklist before the contest
- Create your account and add your callsign.
- Complete the verification the site asks for, well before the contest.
- Check which callsign your logger writes into the Cabrillo header.
- Decide which plan suits the size of your log; see the pricing page.
- Look up the log deadline on the contests page and put it in your calendar.
With this done, the weekend after the contest is only about reviewing the report and fixing the log.
What the check covers once you are verified
When your callsign is verified and your log is uploaded, the check covers every callsign and every zone in the log against official license databases and several independent reference sources, and it shows only the few QSOs worth a second look. You can edit calls, zones, time and frequency in the report, mark QSOs as checked in your own audio recording and download a corrected Cabrillo file. The report also provides full statistics and a year-on-year comparison with your own logs. Serial numbers are not checked, and dupes are not errors.
The service works with Cabrillo from N1MM Logger+, DXLog and Win-Test, and the FAQ says that any Cabrillo 3.0 file is accepted, including files with different spacing, an extra TX column or ISO-8859 encoding. There are 22 contests, and the site is available in 25 languages.
Related reading
- Keeping Your Analysed Logs in One Place
- From Cabrillo File to Report: A Step-by-Step Walkthrough
- First Contest Checklist for Newcomers
The bottom line
Verification keeps accounts personal and reports meaningful. Add and verify your callsign before the contest, check the header of your Cabrillo file and keep the account to yourself. The extra few minutes make the weekend after the contest simpler.
FAQ
Why must my callsign be verified?
According to the FAQ, a log can be checked only for a callsign in your account that is verified, so accounts are not shared.
Can I check a friend’s log in my account?
No. Logs are checked for callsigns that are added and verified in the account that uploads them.
Is my callsign visible to other users?
No. The FAQ says that your log and your callsign are never shown to other users.
When should I verify my callsign?
Before the contest, so that nothing delays you when the log is ready.
Whom do I ask about a special case?
Write to the address on the contacts page.
