OK, here goes. First of all, remember that the act of activating the same summit for no extra points again within a calendar year is still relatively rare among the global SOTA community; we are not dealing with a common behaviour here.
There has to be a point in time that the Database uses as a “cut off” - to separate consecutive activations of the same summit. It uses midnight UTC. Without this, then all activatoins of the same summit within a calendar year would run into one single activation - clearly not the case.
That then calls into question someone activating across the midnight UTC point-in-time. Do they enter as two distinct activations, or one? Well, the choice is theirs. Why?
Well, in several associations, for instance VK and W6, midnight UTC is in normal daylight hours, and an activation might quite normally span across midnight UTC. So that can be entered as a single activation.
But what about the opposite case? For example, I have, on more than one occasion, ascended one of my local hills after 2300z and operated through to 0100z. I have always entered the pre-midnight and post-midnight QSOs as two distinct activations. Why? Because I can. The Database has to have that cut-off point and I therefore use that to record an extra activation. These are repeat activations anyway, so therefore no points at all, let alone additional points are collected.
Yet why should I be able to do this? Well, who’s to say I didn’t get up after my 2350z QSO, walk down to my car 8 minutes away and 80m vertically below the summit, then reascend to resume ops at 0015z? Not that I would need to do that. I would only need to go as far as just out of the 25m activation zone wouldn’t I? Maybe not even that. Consider “drive to” summits like Bishop Wilton Wold G/TW-004 where most activators park in the layby beside the summit and walk 20m or so to their chosen activation point. What would they do - walk to the car and back? Halfway to the car and back? One metre and back?
It’s impossible to define; mathematically you start dicing with fractals. You might say you should packaway all your equipment, then set it all up again. Fine. Mine is a VHF/UHF handheld.
So the Database needs to be able to separate daily activations (for more reasons than I’ve outlined above), but the activator needs a method to get the Database to interpret cross-midnight UTC activations as a single activation - if desired. Or not - if desired. This is all in place.
Regarding the seasonal bonus, I believe Brian is mistaken. I think the seasonal bonus is awarded with a qualification (4 QSOs) of a summit, rather than an activation (1 QSO). Activators submitting a seasonal bonus activation with <4 QSOs before midnight UTC, and <4 QSOs after, but with a sum of >= 4 QSOs, should ensure they do so in a way that the Database reads it as a single activation. Then they get all the points due.
Remember, on manual log entry, you are only asked for the date of the activation once. This is the date of the first QSO. On CSV import entry, all the dates for all the QSOs need to be set as the same as that of the first QSO for this to work. It is fine to use the actual UTC dates of each QSO - but this will cause the Database to split it into two distinct activations. Which, as explained, is not actually a problem, or a “lie” (harsh) because of the multitude of ease/difficulty with which you could leave, and then return to a summit.
The word “lying”, BTW, is way out of line - and in fact plain wrong. The date of an activation is the date of the first QSO, and all subsequent QSOs must be set to this date - for import entry.
