Spots without the reference on SOTAwatch

Hello! I’m about to voice a crazy idea and I’m hoping I won’t be regretting it. :stuck_out_tongue: I did a quick search and didn’t see anything related to this, but if I missed it… sorry.

The short version: I’ve been thinking about what would happen if the summit reference in SOTAwatch spots would be removed.

The longer version: I’ve got some confirmations on sotadata for my activated summits that were not in my activator’s log. Meaning that someone probably heard me, but I didn’t hear them - OR - I heard them, but they didn’t hear me. Still, they marked it as a valid contact when, in fact, it wasn’t. I’ve read on Reflector about this sort of thing happening to others, about getting fake contacts. So I’ve been thinking ( I’ve done that a lot since I can’t go activate any summits for a while :wink: ) : these fake contacts are facilitated by the SOTAwatch spotting system, which requires for spotters to add the summit reference. If the reference would be not mentioned in the spot, but only the callsign and frequency, the SOTAwatch would retain its full functionality, without giving cheaters a chance for mischief. The comment field could be left alone as long as it would be made known that stating the summit reference in there is considered foul play.

Any opinions on this ? :sweat_smile:

My first thought is that at busy times when the spots are appearing in rapid succession I select which activation I am going to call on the basis of firstly those summits that are uniques for me and if no uniques are on offer, then secondly I go for the highest scoring activation and work my way down. Your idea would seriously hamper the modus operandi of my chasing so I am strongly against it.

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Great in principle but in practice someone will run an independant version of SOTAwatch with the summit refs included if the lack of refs is a big enough problem.

The other issue is that I sometimes base my decision on whether to try chasing on the location. There’s no point walking out to my shed for a 2m FM activation anywhere other than my closest summits.

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These are some pretty good points you raise. I never thought of it in the way of using the references for choosing the summits to chase, in FM or otherwise (chasing is not my strong suit due to location/setup). As for the SOTAwatch clone, yeah, that’s a possibility too.

Got it, thanks for the input!

I’m sure this happens to all of us sometimes. I don’t let it bother me. It’s not my job to enforce the rules and if somebody else cheats or allows their enthusiasm to delude themselves into thinking they’ve made a contact when they haven’t it’s not my problem. It’s fairly clear that some chasers set higher standards for themselves than others, but that’s just how things are. It’s not a competition, and life is too short to worry about it.

Having recently had to rely on getting contacts in some very marginal conditions it is really very helpful that many chasers already know my summit. It is much easier to confirm a reference that you already know than to have to pick it out of a weak and fading signal.

Martyn