Wot no spot?

In reply to G0TRB:

Sorry to have missed you and was on 2mtrs at the time having a chat up
north I see in your notes people were monitoring both yourself and
maybe the spots page but too selfish to help others.

Not sure just who the ‘too selfish to help others’ are that you are referring to Roger. Looking at Gerald’s log, he only worked what I would consider 3 regular chasers. Frank G3RMD (who has already explained why he did not spot, not that he owes anybody any explanation), me (G4BLH) operating portable/mobile and one other(who could have any number of reasons for not being able to spot). Paul’s log is similar with only 4 ‘regular chasers’, 3 of whom have already been mentioned above.

as from the info below about spots from another thread.

I’m not sure what the relevance of my comments giving reasons why I sometimes spot activity on calling channels has to do with this thread.

Perhaps you are relying too much on the ‘spotting system’ instead of listening for activity.

Mike G4BLH

In reply to G0TRB:

In reply to M1EYP:

Its not the frequency spots of where but the fact that regular chasers
wont put a spot .

Therefore should it now become Selfishness On The Air .

The sprit of helping others has now vanished.

No Alerts no spots please as its always said the activator is king
work your 4 local mates and sod the rest.

Roger, I was strongly tempted to put on my moderators hat and remove the above post. You overstate your case to the point where you have gone through criticism to petulance. Although there are those who are against the practise of spotting, the fact is that few activations go unspotted. For all you know there might have been perfectly good reasons why spots didn’t appear, not every chaser has a computer, computers and internet connections are not 100% reliable, and it seems that very few people heard the activation, I know I didn’t. And I, for one, don’t entirely depend on the spots although they help a lot! How can you possibly say that the spirit of helpfulness has now vanished when the reflector is a fount of helpfulness and dozens if not hundreds of spots appear of a weekend? As for your gibe about working four mates etc, even a smash-and-grab is justified at times…if I see a storm approaching or I have become dangerously cold I will pack up and descend no matter how many callers are still in the pile-up…and those chasers with mountain experience would praise me for doing so! It is easy to be critical in the warmth of a shack, when I announced that I was going temporarily QRT on Lingmoor Fell recently to protect the gear and myself from a heavy sleet shower I heard people moaning to each other on channel whilst I organised myself as the sleet blew past me, they would have been welcome to come up and take over the mike whilst I cowered!

73

Brian G8ADD

I did wonder whether this old chestnut would raise its head again.

I must say that I don’t feel that in the case of Paul and myself it is at all relevant. We ALERTED for specific frequencies, so anyone wishing to make contact with us would know where to find us. Despite not being on the summit that we had intended activating, we were nonetheless on at the time that we had alerted for. Regular chasers who had seen the alerts would have been able to find us, even without a live internet connection to SOTAwatch.

All of my 4 contacts on 70cms came from having alerted and used a specific frequency. I did call on 432.200, but without success. If others adopted the process of alerting for a specific frequency, then the reliance on spotting would be much less. Perhaps we need to establish SOTA preferred frequencies on VHF and UHF in the way that we have adopted 7.032, 3.666 and even FE on 60m.

Although Paul and myself were surprised not to have been spotted, let me say that neither of us are complaining about the lack of contacts. Sometimes it has been a close call getting a summit qualified and for me this was one such occasion, but I was not unduly worried. Thankfully the regulars have never failed us on more than 300 summits.

73, Gerald G4OIG

In reply to M3LMP:

No one wants it all on a plate just a level playing field it was not that long ago that some chasers used to phone each other to let them know someone was about. A lot of people scan the bands looking for contacts but its when the VHF boys with 11 ele plus beams who are pointing in the wrong direction wont hear many from behind them, thats when the spots help out .

Get well soon .
G0TRB

In reply to G8ADD:

Brian . There you go again with big posh words with your mod hat on yes all the reasons you mention are in use . hundreds of spots at weekends is that all bands all modes on the cluster surely not sota site , they must be removed quickly then by the invisable man . Smash and grabs are justified as you say in the winterand bad WX but on a nice sunny day whos having a laugh now.
I may not have been up a summit but in the last few weeks I have been portable as I seem to recall you were in the log with about another 100 other callsigns.

Finally Yes I am a bit sarky and say things like the truth and not all through frustration we will always disagree as I am not diplomatic .

In reply to G0TRB:

Two points, Roger:

  1. They may be big posh words to you, but they are the way I write, think and speak, you’ll just have to live with them!

  2. No email has been sent to you by any member of the MT, there has been no discussion of your posts and no member of the MT would send such an email without discussion. In short, it was a hoax.

Whilst I can sympathise with your final paragraph, I must ask you to please moderate your language!

73

Brian

PS Although they are dropping off the bottom now, when I just counted there were 118 spots on Saturday and Sunday, on a quiet weekend that is not bad but there will easily be double that on a weekend in the nicer seasons of the year!

Now, now, boys and girls … play nicely!

:slight_smile:

73,
Walt (G3NYY)

In reply to G8ADD:

Brian.

It must be grammer school education then not like me Aston and Handsworth.

No one would admit to sending an hoax, again we wont agree on this subject.

Only an educated man would be able to work out the criptic clues to the end comment.

G0TRB

In reply to G0TRB:

Roger, forward the email to me at mm0fmf_sota AT intermoose.com (replace the AT with @)

There is normally sufficient information hidden in an email to reveal the identity of the sender unless they have take fairly lengthy precautions.

You can also consider following the SOTA spots on Twitter. They don’t get deleted on there but I’m not sure how much latency there is from the spot appearing on Sotawatch to it be tweeted.

Andy
MM0FMF

In reply to MM0FMF:

Hi Andy

I’m not going to get involved in any of the above comments I just want to know what the Twitter address is for Sota Spots!!

Many thanks

73

Matt 2E0XTL

In reply to 2E0XTL:

Suprisingly it is “SOTAwatch” :wink: I can’t remember who actually does the Tweeting but I think it maybe Martyn M1MAJ.

Personally, I have less than zero interest in the “hive mind” nonsense and the reflected banality that passes for comment on Twitter (gosh my friend has just sneezed unexpectedly, I must tell everyone I know etc. etc.). However, my phone provider now provides me free Twitter SMS reception and so it would be rude not to make use of the facility to receive free SMS messages. i.e. I can send Tweets from the server at home for free and now receive them for free.

Once I’m happy with the SOTA database learning/support process I’ll be adding the ability for users of my SMS service to get an acknowledgement their SMS was received and posted to Sotawatch.

There is a small latency though. I sent some test spots earlier and deleted them ASAP. They did not get Tweeted which is only to be expected. Still useful if you want to get spots pushed to you.

Andy
MM0FMF

In reply to G0TRB:

It must be grammer school education then not like me Aston and
Handsworth.

Nope! I went to Handsworth Tech on Soho Road and left when I was 15 - I guess I must have swallowed a dictionary!

73

Brian G8ADD

In reply to G8ADD:

Hi all,

I have been lately asking myself why am I so disillusioned with SOTA??

This thread has just gave me one answer (An activation report has been ripped to shreds by politics)

The other answers are purely my own opinions which I will not banter around on this forum

73

Tony

In reply to G8ADD:

I went to the the Tech when it was at craythorne ave , now hampstead hall.

I guess I must have swallowed a dictionary! or got hit with it as was the tendency in the 1970s

Sorry folks it has gone off original topic of why no one spotted the activator.

Roger

In reply to G0TRB:

Sorry folks it has gone off original topic of why no one spotted the activator.

Actually it was an activation report, not a spotting grouse, not that it matters. It’s not the first time it has happened, but then that’s the nature of the reflector.

As I said before, neither Paul nor I are whinging about the lack of a spot - the report just included a statement relating to how unusual it was not to be spotted when we usually are. Hence why Mission Control in Stourbridge almost went into panic mode.

73, Gerald G4OIG

P.S. I repeat my plea to VHF / UHF activators: put your preferred operating frequency in your alert and hopefully we’ll have none of this 144.300-ssb or 145.500-fm nonsense which obviously winds some people up.

In reply to MM0FMF:

Suprisingly it is “SOTAwatch” :wink: I can’t remember who
actually does the Tweeting but I think it maybe Martyn M1MAJ.

Correct.

There is a small latency though. I sent some test spots earlier and
deleted them ASAP. They did not get Tweeted which is only to be
expected. Still useful if you want to get spots pushed to you.

Yes, there is a latency. The only mechanism I have for picking up the spots is polling the web site, which I currently do about once a minute. I thought it might be considered abusive to hit the server more frequently than somebody viewing the page normally would.

I could make it check more frequently, of course. That would reduce the latency; it would also increase the number of spots which are tweeted multiple times because they have been edited.

Once I’ve seen a spot, it’s fed to the Twitter API straight away (though sometimes it can say “busy try later” - I’ll retry every 10 seconds until it works or the spot is deemed stale). Any further delays are outside my control; SMS delivery times seem very variable.

In reply to M1MAJ:

I’d have thought once/minute is just fine Martyn. SMS latencies are interesting. During testing I’ve seen messages from my phones arrive within a few seconds and that involves crossing network providers. (I use 3 for my phones and ASDAmobile for the server’s dongle). 3 <> Orange latency seems to be the worst, I’ve seen 10hours recently :frowning: As for the server, the UK one runs every minute whereas the one in the USA runs every 5 minutes.

Andy
MM0FMF

In reply to MM0FMF:

What is Twitter ?

73,
Walt (G3NYY)

In reply to G3NYY:

A Web 2.0 social networking site where people expose the minutiae of their loathsome lives in 140 characters or less! :slight_smile:

The premise is you blog (from web log, an online diary) micro events in your life and all you friends do likewise. The limit of 140 characters allows the messages or Tweets to be sent and received via SMS.

Twitter is one of those strange web things that makes you wonder how anyone can make money from it. It is the darling of journalists and allows celebutards (retarded celebreties) to engage with their fans. Journalists love it (especially the BBC) because, like Wikipedia, they can do their job without needing to venture forth from the pub. So, Walt you can set up your Walt page and then regularly update the page every time you get out of your chair, scratch you chin, work some DX, read the paper, have a cuppa etc. Users can elect to follow your missives and hang on your every word and reply with similar stuff.

The upside of Twitter is that there are deals with numerous phone providers whereby you can receive other peoples Tweets for free. Mobile phone networks cost money to run whether any one is using them or not. The business model is that by getting the phone networks to allow people to receive Tweets by SMS for free, these people will send replies back by SMS to Twitter that they have to pay for. i.e. people will start sending messages they never would have normally sent. If you imagine there may be 100 hundred people following some stream of Tweets, enough of them will respond to each incoming Tweet that it drives up the phone network’s revenue to such an extent the cost of free reception is more than covered.

You can tell from my somewhat pithy description of Twitter so far that I do not hang on the words of celebutards or even friends and colleagues. But if Twitter will send an SMS to my phone for free then I can use that for my own needs. I have a computer running 24hrs a day connected to the internet. I can use that to send messages to Twitter and Twitter will send those to my phone for free. Or too many phones for free (as long as you are using the right network). This gives me the ability to send status messages about my SMS server to me for free and will allow me to send acknowledgments to users for free.

The SOTAwatch Tweets contain spots from Sotawatch. If you use the right network you can sign up to receive these Tweets on your phone as an SMS message. For free, zilch, nada, rien! So you can receive a stream of spots wherever you are as long as your phone has coverage. That kind of usefulness overrides all the downsides.

You can find more info at http://www.twitter.com.

Andy
MM0FMF

In reply to MM0FMF:

A Web 2.0 social networking site where people expose the minutiae of their >loathsome lives in 140 characters or less! :slight_smile:

I thought it was something like that. That’s why I have steered well clear of it, although I have vaguely heard of it. I also loathe things like Facebook and similar so-called “social networking” sites.

Thanks for the info!

73,
Walt (G3NYY)