Being somewhat new to SOTA, in that I have only been on two ‘summits’, I have a couple of questions relating to activations and chasing.
So I am on a summit, and I am keeping a log of people contacting me, some of which are on other summits. Do I just add these S2S contacts as regular activator log entries?
So I am on a summit, and I hear other sota stations and call them. Does this log entry for this type of S2S get added as a chaser?
Perhaps someone could clarify this for me, and perhaps point me towards a doc?
For an activation you log everyone you work, it doesn’t matter where they are or what they are doing. They don’t have to be following any of the rules an activator follows for a valid SOTA QSO.
When you chase someone, they are activating a summit and following SOTA rules, you log them if you think they are a valid SOTA activation. Your status as valid SOTA doesn’t matter for a chase.
For a summit to summit contact, you both have to be following SOTA rules for it to be an S2S contact. That has to be the case because you are both activating a SOTA summit.
The S2S logging is an extension to chasing. So you log the chase and then declare it’s an S2S QSO by ticking the box and filling in the extra details. The software will actually enter a normal chase in your chaser log and it will enter an S2S contact in your S2S log. If you have already recorded the chase you will have received points and the second entry will be scored as 0. This is fine, the software can cope with this.
Or you can use CSV upload. In that case you can have your activation data, chase data and S2S data all in the same file. When you upload the CSV file as an activation, the activation records are found and added to your log. You then need to upload the CSV file again as a chaser log. Here, chase records are found and added to your log. Also S2S records are found and added to your log. Depending on how you add the data to your CSV file, you may see multiple chases for the same contact appear, only one chase scoring points. But as explained earlier, the software knows and understands what is happening.
To delete chases you can delete them from your chaser log. If you try to delete a chase that really is part of an S2S QSO you get told you can’t delete it from the current page. In that case, you show your S2S log and delete the QSO from there. That will delete the S2S and chaser data.
You don’t have to do anything special with your activator log in relation to S2S contacts, just log all the contacts uou make. You could write a note of the summit you worked in the notes column, but this is optional and serves only as a bit of interest.
Regarding logging the chase, enter the log as normal and then find the tick box for S2S. This will then add additional data fields which you need to fill in with the details of the summit you were on.
So would I essentially do nothing other than fill in an activator log if another SOTA station contacts me for a S2S contact? They would fill in the chaser?
If i were to contact them, on their frequency for example, would I fill in a chaser log and not add them to the activator log?
I am probably over complicating something here, heh
Hi Richie,
Presuming you are simply using the website (sotadata.org.uk) to enter your contacts, for S2S contacts, enter them as an activator contact along with all your other contacts from the summit, then enter the S2S contact again as a chaser contact and tick the S2S box - the webpage will then ask for your summit reference.
If you are using an application to enter the contacts rather than the website, check the program’s instructions.
It doesn’t matter who called who to initiate the contact, both SOTA Activators need to enter the data as described by Andy earlier, if they both want to get S2S points…
