I love RBNHole. Above all, it reduces the number of technology hassles one has to deal with while on a summit, which is a great thing (at least for me): it gives me more time to enjoy the view, talk to other summit-goers, eat my sandwich, drink my cup of tea, and of course complete my activation.
I’ve happily used this tool for all my single-summit activations for more than a year. Yesterday I did one of my rare double-summit activations from E7/BO-083 and E7/BO-057. I posted alerts for 8:00 UTC and 11:00 UTC activations, respectively, hoping that my first activation would be around 10:00 UTC (in the 3 hour time slot of the first alert) and the second one around 12:00 UTC (in the 3 hour time slot of the second alert). However, both my activations have been spotted by RBNHole as from the second summit (E7/BO-057). I noticed that many hours later when I returned home. What did I do wrong?
Well, the answer can be found at VK3ARR’s SOTA Blog (RBNHole | VK3ARR's SOTA Blog):
“…You will be spotted if you are within the time window for your alert (-1/+3 hours), and if there are more than one alert that you’re within the window for, RBNHole will choose the one closest to your original alerted time…”
This peculiarity of the system is easy to be overlooked or forgot if you are not a frequent multi-summit activator. Now, I learned my lesson and will remember this simple rule in the future. Of course, all of you dear activators, feel free to learn from my mistake. And you, dear chasers, who worked me between 10:30 and 10:40 UTC on July 1st, 2018, please check out your logs: during that time period I was operating from E7/BO-083, not from E7/BO-057.