Hi Matt,
Oh no nothing so bad. My only typing is into the SOTA database[quote=“VK1MA, post:13, topic:12886”]
John, are you manually entering in each contact to the database as well as typing it into your exel log?
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Hi Matt,
Thanks but oh no, my only typing is into the SOTA database and the internet browser fills in a lot of detail if I’ve worked the station in the past. Just before finalising the summit and sending, I copy and paste the log into an excel template I created. After quickly rearranging the columns into the order you’d find in a proper logsheet, I add the other info which was recorded at the summit such as power, exact QRG, RST’s etc. When complete that gets dumped onto the end of my SOTA excel log which I started with my first activation on 5th April 2002.
You won’t know this but in those early days, the database was controlled solely by the then SOTA management. The only way to claim your first summit (other than mailing in your paper log) was to register and ask that the excel log blank be sent to you via email. After typing in the summit, the ref, callsigns, comments, power, RST’s, your QSO’s, etc. you emailed a copy back to them and it became your personal record. Next time you activated, you would add the details of the activation to your excel log and email it off a second time and so on.
Everything else was done via the old SOTA Yahoo reflector and if I remember rightly, the league tables were available there. It worked but it meant a lot of work for the founder John G3WGV in keeping all this up to date manually when more and more people started SOTA each month that went by. Each log sent to him had to be copied and pasted into his master database. This excel log is the log I am still using today and I regard it as my master doc. It has far more detail than what you send to the database which is not a proper amateur log at all; merely a vehicle to claim summits. I can search for anything which is useful when the odd QSL card comes in.
So there’s a bit of history for you. It’s just from memory but there’ll be a few of us from the early days that remember it. What we need now is a fancy machine that listens to the activation and out pops the log complete with bulk upload option! No typing at all.
As for accuracy, completeness and honesty. I think we could discuss it all week and really get nowhere. There isn’t an answer that will completely eliminate these issues but there is something that was instilled in us SOTA people right from the start. It is summed up in the phrase, ‘The Spirit of SOTA.’ The phrase came from the people who thought SOTA up and we should all try to abide by it. It’s the reason why some requests for clarification of difficult rule book detail are turned down. For example the phrase, ‘The final approach to the summit shall be made on foot.’. How far is ‘final?’ Conscience is the bottom line there and the same applies to submitting accurate and truthful logs. Also, you can’t fool yourself.
All the best,
John.