Hi Larry, that’s an award I haven’t come across, global mountain hunter, did you perhaps mean the Gold Mountain Hunter award (15 associations and 2 continents). There’s also a Globetrotter award but that’s for activators not chasers. Here are the list of SOTA awards.
I may be wrong but I think these are new (for the activator): Award Level No. of Associations No. of Continents
By the way, the definition of requirements for these awards is not as descibed in the shop - there it says less associations are needed (only one in each continent): https://sota-shop.co.uk/proddetail.php?prod=mexplorer
… Now there is a Global Mountain Award scheme (But we don’t talk about that here).
You are not yet a Mountain Goat with 10 points. You are a Shack Sloth with 10072 points. Shack Sloth achieved on 19-Mar-2017 10x Shack Sloth achieved on 03-Sep-2018 Mountain Explorer Award Status = Unqualified Association(s) Activated W0C - USA - Colorado
Mountain Hunter Award (all bands) Status = Global
Mountain Hunter (Global)=50 associations (2 QSOs per association) on 5 continents.
Now it seems the HF Mountain Hunter Award has disappeared entirely, with only the VHF version appearing. Was the page reloaded to an earlier version, perhaps during a backup?
It goes platinum and then ALL associations - which I am a long, long way away from! - for that reason I haven’t been thinking about any more Mountain Hunter awards as the “ALL” option for me is unachievable. If there are two other levels before that, then may be I should consider the awards some more …
Yes Phil Propagation USA - EU is improving slowly:
Yesterday I made an S2S QSO with Ian N9XG (on W1/DI-007) working on 20m CW, and we exchanged 339 reports. It has been quite a while since this has happened to me. In addition, today I worked AC1Z and K0RS from an OE/OO summit.
Quite often I see my spots from US-based RBN stations, but only a few American chasers answer my CQ. I hope that American SOTA chasers will listen closely for us because USA-EU propagation is indeed improving.
73 de OE/HB9BIN/P, Jürg (George)
IIRC, all of these chases were with my TH5DX yagi in the village QTH and 100w or more, except for @N9XG last Sept 3rd who was putting a very strong signal and I chased him with the endfed wire in the city appartment balcony and about 50 watts output.
(I wonder how much power and which antenna he was using)
Most of them at too late times for me to be in a mountain top, unless it’s a drive on summit.
I guess it’s the same for you.
Hi Guru,
Yes that’s true with me as well, not a drive-on summit but at least an easy one will be the only option at these times. Of course the clocks go back an hour in October, so it wont be quite as bad as if it were happening now.
Quite true. I think many USA stations employ low wire antennas that are very effective for high angle domestic QSOs and only a few have beams or other high directional antennas necessary for DX QSOs. Hence many stateside stations don’t copy EU sigs. Most reporting RBN stations are DXers or contest stations with more effective DX antenna installations.
I frequently hear the US east coast working SOTA stations in EU that I can’t hear. EU is much more difficult for me (especially at QRP levels used by most SOTA activators) than for the east coast US, but I always try to listen for EU when I see the spots. I have a great deal of difficulty with New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and northern Colorado stations that fall within my skip zone but outside groundwave. I certainly could benefit from some high angle wires for closer in QSOs. However I can normally hear JA very well. I am beginning to hear the JAs as well after Japan being quiet this summer.
Conditions seem to have picked up markedly in the last few days. Hopefully the summer doldrums are behind us. For me, at least now, 1400~1600z seems best for EU.
It states:
"… "Tourist Award - confirmed activation of at least one summit in each of 2 continents "Frequent Traveller Award - confirmed activation of at least one summit in each of 3 continents "Business Class Award - confirmed activation of at least one summit in each of 4 continents “Globetrotter Award - confirmed activation of at least one summit in each of 5 continents …” ‘at least one summit’ that infers for (for example) for the Tourist award only two summits are needed - in fact a minimum of 5 (each in a different associations) are needed and these spread across two continents.
It might be good to simply refer to the other page that Lary K0RS gave this URL to, in the text at this page, so there’s just one place to go to.
73 Ed.
Note correction from original post - two summits not two contacts.
I have noticed an improvement, but only in the very low noise environment of quiet hilltops. A couple of chases from N1GB and an s2s with VE1PVH - 1st ever NA chase.
At about 14:10 UTC I just heard both sides of the Stavros SV2RUJ/P on SV/MC-006 to W1OW QSO on 20m SSB with 5-5 reports given both ways - so I think it looks like conditions are improving. I realise Bill has probably got a “better than average” station but it’s some time since I’ve heard anything out of the US here on my 40m wire loop.
I suggest you read what is on that link and stop assuming that the “Tourist” and other traveller awards are a step up from the normal Mountain Explorer awards - they are not!
The travel awards were instigated to give another way of gaining awards in the light of many folks travelling on vacation or for work to different continents
You require at least FOUR contacts to qualify the hill, nothing different here from the usual Activator awards.
For the sake of clarity - the definition on the shopping site takes precedence, it may be the case that the other pages have either not caught up or are waiting for one of the volunteers to find time to update the information. If there are genuine inconsistencies then rather than discussing it on the reflector (which I visit only about once per week) just send me an email or contact me via the website and explain why you think there is something wrong on the shopping website and I will try to find out where I may have goofed.
Sorry typo - that should have said “SUMMITS” not “contacts”. (Now corrected).
In any case compare the two pages what they say are different and (IMHO) it’s probably better to link to one reference page rather than to quote again on the individual award pages. If you want to stay like that, then they should be consistant ( note both of the pages I gave URLs to are on the shopping site!) .
This all started off in response to what Larry K0RS said: “Our QSO qualified me for global mountain hunter.”
Which I queried as I had not heard of the “Global mountain hunter award” - at that point Lary said he had got it from the shoping site - I had been looking under the overview of awards under “Joining in” on the sota.org.uk site (i.e. the introduction pages to the award scheme). Later as you’ll see from the thread, Lary found the page on the shopping site that he had got the reference from. It was then that I saw the inconsistency in the different pages where the awards are listed and within the individual “buy” pages for the certificates. and I expressed the wish in Improving HF Condx EU > USA - #28 by DD5LP that the pages needed to be updated - in hindsight however I think it would be far better to have one location for the list of awards and their requirements to qualify and this page be linked to from all other places where the information is needed so that when changes are made, they are only made in one place. That is IT “best practice”.
In any case, this has gone way, way, way off the topic of improving DX conditions so we should all be happy about the improving conditions and I’ll shut up on this topic which will probably make everyone happy as well. win-win!
