The time is near.... July 2010. QUESTIONS

In reply to KD9KC:

The SOTA website is a good start:

http://www.sota.org.uk/JoiningIn

73

Richard
G3CWI

In reply to G3CWI:

Mike, a very short guide:

1 You log in SOTAwatch, just like you did to make this post.

2 You click on ALERT, then NEW ALERT and fill in the spaces etc… call used, the summit designator, bands modes, and UTC time expected.

3 You will see your alert on the alerts list. This is by far the best way for everybody to be aware of your activation and the secret of a succesfull activation. If you do so, you will have callers. If you do cancel the activation, it is appreciate to edit your alert to make it known by chasers.

4 You hike, get station ready, call CQ SOTA… and have fun!

5 In QSOs, I exchange some usual infos (name rigs temp) and important, I send the summit designator.

6 Back to home, you enter your log in the main website (sota.org.uk) database section, activators log. Should be easy to get there.

By the way, I hope to QSO with you saturday if you have somebody on 20 CW, we could have a chance.

73 Mike

JP VA2SG

I have completed uploading the 75 regions (phew!) of the new W5 association this evening. This means that the summits are all in the Database now, but you won’t see them until they become valid on 1st July 2010. You can see the list of regions though, by clicking “Summits”, “List of all summits”, “W5”. You can check a summit is in the Database by typing its reference into the “Find summit” field (get a region code from the list of regions then guess a number!).

The summits do not appear on SOTAwatch yet, but they will do very shortly after Jon GM4ZFZ has initiated an update to that part of the system. Once that is complete, you will be able to post alerts for W5 summits.

All the above applies also to the new HL (South Korea), W7 (Utah) and W7 (Oregon) associations. There have also been updates, including some new summits, in the SV (Greece), G (England), OH (Finland), SM (Sweden) and VE2 (Canada) associations. The SOTA Database is about 5,000 summits bigger and over 20% “fatter” than it was this time last week!

Enjoy!

Tom M1EYP

I see now that Jon GM4ZFZ has updated the SOTAwatch website, so now all the new summits and new associations are visible on here. This also means that alerts for 1st July and after can now be placed for prospective activations in the new W7, HL and W5 associations.

Tom M1EYP

In reply to KD9KC:

For the chaser points, the SOTA general rules say:

With effect from 01-Jan-2004, only one QSO with a given Summit on any one day (defined as 00:00 to 23:59 UTC counts for points. But you guys will probably make QSOs with same chasers, these fellows will want to make sure everybody up there have at least their 4 contacts needed for their activators points. I am more on the collaboration side than the competition side. This is no contest.

Every activator should enter their contacts (I do it one at a time, rarely make more then 10 contacts per activation (that is now but this will get higher!)), by open sota main site, then click on database, then click submit log and submit activator entry, click to register (this will open you an account) use your callsigns as logon and the rest is easy, no need to explain more. Just follow what the site tells you to do.

You could even activate using another call than yours say K5S and enter the contacts you made with this call in your account.

I believe you now know the most important stuff. Slowly but surely, the program will attract people, do not be disappointed if the first months or year is rather slow, maybe it wont be. GL Mike!

Mike,

I was wondering (for future reference) if there is a way to bulk-load
a contact log into the system. Having no experience with it, I do not
know how involved entering contacts may be. I do keep an electronic
log at home. Any contacts I make will later be entered into that log.
Doing an export-import would be great, especially if you have 50
contacts or so.

There are two methods of entering contacts (both as a Chaser and as an Activator) into the database.

Go to http://www.sotadata.org.uk/ and if you have not already done so then on the ‘Logon/Logoff’ menu click registration and complete the registration process.

On completion of registration on the ‘Submit Log’ menu you will find the links you need, it is perhaps easiest to use the ‘Sumbit Activator’ and ‘Submit Chaser’ ones at least the first time and follow the forms to fill in the details.

Once you have done this for at least one activation and one chaser entry you can go the the ‘View Results’ menu and select ‘My Activator Log’ or ‘My Chaser Log’ (logon as necessary) at the bottom of the Log click the ‘Save to File’ button and you will get a CSV file. This CSV file is the format that you need to upload entries using the ‘Import’ options on the ‘Submit Log’ menu. (As I recall the activator and chaser CSV’s are not quite the same).

If you work any other Summits whilst out as an activator don’t forget to enter each of these contacts into both logs so that you get the chaser points as well as the activator points.

Tip: If you discover that you made a mistake with an activator entry then download the complete activator log again before deleting the whole activator entry from the databse entirely (you will see this option on the Activator Log screen), then edit the CSV to leave just the entries for the activation that needs updating and make your corrections before uploading the entry again.

I have only ever used a plain text editor (i.e. Notepad) to edit the CSV, so I cannot comment on how well it works if you use something like MS Excel to edit or create a CSV.

Hope that Helps

Stewart G0LGS

Mike,

Yes, it is possible to do bulk uploads. However, I would strongly recommend that you use the plain direct website entry forms to begin with - “Submit activator entry”. Once you have used this to enter few activations and familiarised yourself with the system, then maybe look at the bulk upload facility then.

Do not worry. Any errors in your activator log submission will not mess things up for those that worked you. Stations claiming chaser points for working your summit do so independently by entering their own logs and claims, and the system does not perform a check with the activator’s log.

Chaser stations may work several operators on the same activation, and may log all of them. But the database will only award the chaser points for the first of the stations worked in each calendar day. Subsequent logs will be listed, but show as zero points.

Have fun.

Tom M1EYP