I've confirmed that case-sensitivity was not the root cause of the mapping issue -- it was carriage returns at the end of the string. When I tested by changing the gridsquare to upper-case in my database, the carriage return got removed. This gave us a false positive that it was a case issue. I have tested withwith XX11xx grid squares and have confirmed that case makes no difference.

application/views/view_log/qso.php

@@ -133,7 +133,7 @@ margin: 10px 0;
 
 <?php
 	if($row->COL_GRIDSQUARE != null) {
-		$stn_loc = $this->qra->qra2latlong(trim(strtoupper($row->COL_GRIDSQUARE)));			
+		$stn_loc = $this->qra->qra2latlong(trim($row->COL_GRIDSQUARE));			
 		$lat = $stn_loc[0];
 		$lng = $stn_loc[1];
 	} else {