MM0EFI:
The 5x10⁶ posts on this topic are inversely proportional to my desire to take part.
indeed…
the only winner in this challenge is the one who understands the rules
73 Franz
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That has worked. Thanks for all your hard work.
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Good thing there is no winner in this challenge. Everyone will get a certificate like some late-90s primary school sports day.
Gentlemen, given the length of the topic, can I suggest that we keep the thread for people who need to report bugs, and follow the principle that “I’m not participating in the challenge” is best achieved by actions (or rather, a lack thereof), not words.
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Awesome, glad to have gotten to the bottom of it.
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This is the first time I have looked at this topic - and the last! All I know is that
a) I can’t take part as i work on 2m fm and 70cm fm and have no SSB capabiity
b) I shall presumably be adversely affected by this challenge as other activators will be on SSB so I shall get far fewer S2s and also chasers. It is fortunate that a significant proportion of my chasers are not part of the SOTA ‘family’ and so should still be listening out on fm.
c) Judging by the large volume of queries and little squabbles I am possibly lucky to be unable/unwilling to take part. I hope things improve.. I wish you all good luck.
73 Viki
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I can’t be arsed reading through the rest of this long thread, I had had enough when I skimmmed through to the end of Part 3, and I am yet to work an activator using VHF this year.
Maybe someone else has picked this up and commented but If this scoring Challenge algorithm is correct and working as it should be, there is no point me targetting 2m/70cm as a Chaser to try to build up a decent score. Yes, I am one of the sinners who enjoy the competition in amateur radio operating in all it’s flavours. Thank you to the MT for rearranging the scoring in points order.
As an example, take the scores for Richard G4TGJ - well done OM for getting off (and no doubt a very cold off) to a great start in this challenge and operating on bands and modes that you have paid scant interest to before. That is the attraction of this Challenge, and I think you do right.
Look at Richard’s @g4tgj Chaser score for 2026, 35 Points, probably all garned whilst activating I guess…
Now look @g4tgj Challenge Chaser score, 1152 points!
Other activators also doing very well in the Challenge Chaser table too…
So I’ll look forward to working Tom M1EYP/P in the RSGB 2m AC tomorrow night if the weather is conducive for him to brave The Cloud and there are no gigs or footy games on. Clarification waited as to if this scoring system is as it should be.
73 Phil G4OBK
There’s a lot of activators out at the moment because of the novelty and that’s leading to summit to summit contacts, but I expect that will drop off eventually. Given this is based on distance you can’t compare the points from last year to this year.
Anyway, dealt with three bug reports today, got through about 500 work emails, and now I am going to bed. Fight it out amongst yourselves until I wake up 
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Oh, and I should add there’s now an option when uploading Chaser Logs via CSV file (only) to automatically include your SSO location so you don’t have to use the %QRA% format if you don’t want to
This new feature is being vigorously tested by my tame UAT person @VK1AD and he hasn’t found anything (yet)
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Hard work much appreciated Andrew - I don’t know how you manage a sound sleep with these complex software projects buzzing around in your head, but I hope you sleep soundly tonight.
73 Phil G4OBK
PS Thank you for adding the option for adding your SSO location to uploads in csv. If this works then I do not need to alter the way I have been submitting my ADI2SOTA (F6ENO) CSV chaser logs for many a year to score my VHF Chaser QSOs!
I await the news on why activators are achieveing such mega high scores in the 2026 Challenge table and if this can be fixed.
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Hi Viki,
I plan to do these QSO’s as an addition not a replacement so no loss for operators like yourself.
Andy
MM7MOX
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I’m not convinced this is true. So far I have done 2 activations and on 2m started on FM. I then switched to SSB using the same antenna i.e. vertically polarised. I mostly worked the same stations I had already worked on FM (although there were a few new ones). The four S2S I have worked on 2m SSB I had already worked on FM.
To do SSB I am taking my FT817. This means my FT65 handheld is ready to go with its long rubber duck and is clipped to my rucksack so I am actually more likely to work local S2S on 2m FM.
Unfortunately there have been some bugs in the database software causing some confusion but I think they are resolved now.
Why? AFAIK you have a decent home 2m station capable of vertical and horizontal polarisation so you should be able to pick up many of us for some decent distances.
One thing I like about this challenge is that it will work well in summer. The 10m challenge was great but once the weather turned warm the propagation did its usual summer nose dive.
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Well done Andrew! I had one S2S on 2m SSB which was not counted for the Challenge activator score. After your fix (plus edit/resubmit log on my part) the distance for that QSO shows up in my log and increases the score.
Thank you for all the hard work you do keeping SOTA systems online and fixing the bugs on short notice. Happy New Year!
73!
Marcin SQ9OZM
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To count for points in the challenge, callsigns need to be unique per summit, but what happens if you work the same callsign but they are at a different location? This is a common situation with S2S.
Suppose I activate summit A and work M4ABC/P who is on summit B on 2m SSB and he is 100km away. On another day I return to summit A and work M4ABC/P who is now on summit C on 2m SSB and he is 200km away. Will my total distance for these contacts be 100km, 200km or 300km?
Are M4ABC and M4ABC/P treated as the same callsign, or different callsigns?
Should be (according to current implementation of scoring):
200km : Activator Results
300km: Chaser Results
I suspect your pessimistic instincts will prove wrong Viki, and you will be pleasantly surprised. I’ve only done a couple of activations in the Challenge so far, but in both I found that:
- I needed to “drum up business” on 2m FM and persuade people to also make contact (if they could) on SSB (similar to you yourself cajoling people onto 70cm).
- There were S2S opportunities on 2m FM that I couldn’t ignore.
So in both activations, I made more QSOs on 2m FM than on CW/SSB.
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Yes, it is.
Footy is on tomorrow night, and the wx looks unpleasant. So unlikely I’ll be doing the 2m UKAC tomorrow, but not completely ruled out at this point.
However you raise a valid concern. But fear not, the scoring algorithm guards against your concern. As you know well, the cohort of participants in these events is broadly the same every month. So each one of them will count once, and once alone for me, from G/SP-015 for the whole year. I’ll get the distance points for G4BP once - but not again, regardless of how many 2m UKACs I work you in from The Cloud in 2026.
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Hi Viki, I agree with Richard, Andy and Tom about activators not ignoring 2m FM this year.
I did my first SOTA outing of the year today and took part in the 2026 2m/70cm SSB/CW Challenge. I got 6 2m FM contacts, 4 SSB and 3 CW contacts from G/LD-058 [the lowest SOTA in England] with my 5W to J-pole on 3m pole bungee corded to a bench. My fingers would have frozen assembling and erecting my 2m Yagi had I brought it.
I thought I would be lucky to go 15 minutes in the cold but I was pleasantly warm in the bright sunshine and QRV for almost an hour.
This happens every year with SOTA (but in this case for the Challenge): If I do one or two activations very early in January I often get in the Top Ten. By February I’m lucky to be in the Top 50 and by Spring I’m nowhere to be seen.
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They are considered the same callsign. The scoring algorithm will choose the largest distance recorded for that callsign root from that summit.
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Got my first Challenge QSOs today! First two with Don @GW0PLP both SSB/CW (counting as one QSO for the challenge) and third one with Steve @GW0GEI CW. After activation ADIF upload all that automatically reflected in the Challenge tab resulting 159+168=328 points
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I am an old school activator, and I am using paper log. Because of location/distance log requirements - this Challenge is a big challenge for me
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