I am scratching for 4 QSOs right now in the PA wilds (VHF) and have 4 QSOs now. One ham gave me his personal AND club call. Can I use these as TWO separate QSOs?
*The 20% of rain forecast before my 4 hour drive to summit turned into a looks like all afternoon downpour but the old FT60 keeps chugging along covered by a ziplock bag!
I don’t think so. The contacts are with stations, not call signs. From 3.7.1 (8) “for the activation to qualify for the points attributed to that Summit, a minimum of four QSOs must be made, each of which must be with a different station.”
Nobody likes doing it but tend to work the QSOs of extra calls as “bankers” in case nobody else is worked. There is much relief when you work a 4th QSO followed by feasting upon the lambs, and sloths, and carp, and anchovies, and orangutans, and breakfast cereals, and fruit bats, and large chulapas to celebrate
The limit is 2 callsigns per operator. I think I have seen it somewhere in the rules.
Same goes for any suffix like Andy mentioned: /p or /m is still the same callsign.
Same goes for using any CEPT callsigns that one could use (because that’s imho not allowed in general).
Erik,
Good luck on your continuing quest for VHF Mountain Goat. Keep in mind that many of the SOTA summits in the East are also within state parks or other POTA entities. You were within Micheau State Forest K-5471 and near the Appalachian Trail K-4556. For difficult VHF peaks, alerting POTA chasers can sometimes easily double the number of chasers hunting for you. If you post an activation alert on POTA then you are obliged to submit a copy of your log to POTA for their award credits.
Stay well, blue skies & 73!
Mike, WB2FUV
My take, certainly in the UK the authority to establish a station is vested in the holder of the licence. Ergo two licences with different callsigns = two stations, even if the radio equipment is actually the same…
Not sure about that one… by extension from my last point, 3 unique licences should allow 3 different “stations” ?
But as Andy said most people regard multiple callsigns from one operator as very much a desperate last resort…
I was thinking about that (SOTA-POTA) for where I was at while driving away. I did do a SOTA and POTA recently in Adirondacks and Mt Greylock in Mass.
In other news!
I had my first “”CW”” POTA activation last evening and it was a blast! I was using the MTR4BV2 on 40m many kind patient hams chased me. I should be sharp on CW when I start activating SOTA at 1001(ish) points.
I could not remember any such rule so I checked to be safe, and no such rule exists. I took part in the last two revisions of the rules so I was pretty sure that it wasn’t in the rules but at my age memory is just a rough guide!
It would seem easy to distinguish between the same equipment with two operators and two call signs vs the same equipment with one operator and two call signs.
Station licensing varies by country. In the US, there is an implicit station license when a licensed operator uses it. When the same equipment is under the control of a different operator, that would be considered a separate station license, I think.