Just discovered the activator uniques roll of honour. Interesting browsing, as my current long-term challenge is to see how many points I can accumulate as an activator without repeating any peaks. I reckon I should get to 3xMG within ZL before the travel becomes too ridiculous and the whole idea too restrictive. So how is it going in other associations?
I can see a few others who seem to be on a similar path - way ahead of me, specks on the horizon - but on the same path! MM0YCJ’s 1299 unique summits with a 100% unique ratio is, well, impressive - considering how many years, and how many diesel-kilometers it’s taken me to reach 279 uniques.
But what I’m interested in is the points of those unique summits. I can look that up manually for those users with a 100% unique ratio - MM0YCJ for example has 7897 points. Equally impressive: nearly 8xMG, all unique! Giving a points average per activation of 6.07 - almost identical to mine, so he’s not got there by strolling up 1-pointers.
But can I compare the unique points achieved by other activators - those with a <100% unique ratio?
While it’d be pretty slim pickings for me to go forward as only-uniques, knowing your point count for summits removing cross-year repeat visits would be interesting. With not so much travel in my life and some convenient cross-program summits (with POTA and WWFF), I’ll keep repeating in my local selection of W9/WI, for now.
When I started playing SOTA… I also had the idea that this type of game had charm!
Unfortunately, I have very limited opportunities to do amateur radio at home… since I wanted to do more, this version was ruled out for me… But without a doubt - it has something!
I can assure you Armin that the charm does wear off to a certain degree, with travel up and down the same roads being particularly challenging in the early hours. However, in my case the urge for activating new summits definitely remains.
Living 80km from the nearest SOTA summit doesn’t offer any opportunities for repeat activations of a local summit. Anyway, regardless of this, I’m fairly certain that I would not find repeat experiences particularly attractive. I have therefore put my efforts and funds into new experiences. I should have started with the summits far away when I was younger and worked my way towards home as I got older, but that would require a massive amount of foresight. Besides, I was a couple of hundred summits in before I realised I had the disease!
Mark (AE1MS) and I (AE1JS) had no idea until recently that anyone (least of all, ourselves) was keeping up with position on a 100% uniques list! We were in total shock to find that we had the most in the Western hemisphere! We didn’t start down this path intentionally. We finally moved to North Georgia, close to the North Carolina border, where summits are plentiful, and, even though we are retired, we are still adventurous, so we just kept on exploring new summits. I guess we’re in it for the long haul now! Thank you so very much, everyone, for all the chases!
It is perhaps worth pointing out that some accounts with “100% unique” may belong to people who have in fact activated duplicate summits under an alternative callsign and logged them in a different database account. This shouldn’t really happen - the General Rules state: “Activator points accrue to the operator regardless of the callsign used” and people aren’t supposed to have more than one database account. But there have certainly been cases in which people have openly advertised that they are using a different callsign to avoid breaking their “100% unique” record and the MT appears not to have publicly objected.
I face that dilema myself when taking visiting hams up local hills.
My solution is to carry out a QRP activation from the summit - often using our club call ZL6QRP so people I’m there for QRP not SOTA. For me these are contacts logged only towards my personal QRP tally - the fact they’re from a SOTA summit is coincidental and they are not logged as a SOTA activation. Though from my understanding of the rules, chasers would be valid in logging them as SOTA chases if they wished.
This benefits all both parties. I get to play QRP radio and the visiting ham gets a local guide w/ 4WD and company on the summit.
I’m morally happy with that, and no SOTA rules are bent or broken.
What you do sounds fine to me, though it isn’t something I would do myself. I am by nature a bit of a completist and it would irk me to have SOTA contacts that I hadn’t logged. But that’s just me.
I am not suggesting by the way that anybody is intending to mislead. I am simply pointing out that you cannot necessarily infer from the database that a “100% unique” record actually means that the person hasn’t duplicated any summits.
Oh, I’m so sorry! I did not realize that parts of Western Europe are part of the Western Hemisphere! My bad! I guess that goes to show that I didn’t do very well in geography in grade school! I always thought that the hemispheres were divided by the oceans, but after looking at a map, I see that my assumption was completely false! (face is red!)
There seem to be different definitions of the Western Hemisphere. Although the Greenwich meridian is usually used (so that parts of Europe are in the Western Hemisphere) it’s also common to use 20 degrees west so that Europe is excluded. So no need for a red face!
