Birkenhead peak

Activation Reports Pre-Planning
1

We are trying tomorrow (Saturday July 22) to activate Birkenhead peak,BC,Canada( VE7/SL-011). It has never been activated before. Hope to see you all up there 8)

Daniel

2

I don’t see an alert on SOTAwatch. Am I missing something?
Jim

3

I have issue sign in 8(

4

Wouldn’t it have been better to have got that fixed before now by communicating with the relevant people and then posted a proper alert. As Andy has already said in a separate thread, this reflector is not the place for posting Alerts. That is what SOTAwatch is for.
Jim

1 Like
5

I think we’re losing sight of some of the FAQ principles here. Lots of people (including MT members) use the reflector ‘pre-planning’ topic to draw attention to future activations. Yes, SOTAwatch is better. But let’s stay friendly

1 Like
6

Daniel, Jim and All,

There is an alert by VE7RIJ for VE7/SL-011 Birkenhead Peak. To be accompanied by VA7DDV.

2100 on Saturday 23 July for 14.285-ssb,7.118-ssb. The date is wrong above, and the peak is incorrect above and on the alert.

Good luck to you guys - here’s to the Chasers finding you on frequency and on time!

Etienne-K7ATN

7

Both fixed

8

You raise an point worthy of discussion Andy (him not me!).

Firstly the reason why alerts are always to be preferred is several fold. The main reason is that’s why the facility exists and the next best reason is this forum/reflector website has less buy in and traction with many SOTA people who do not speak much English. On top of that, many keen SOTA chasers will have SOTAwatch visible when they do not have this website visible. They can see what is being spotted and what is due. So by and far the best place for an alert is on the alerts page.

Now we all know that despite our best laid plans, things go wrong or conspire to make activations not happen. Again the best thing to do is to modify the alert with new info. Typically that will be changing the time or summit, maybe having to mark the attempt as abandoned. This can be problematic when you are mobile. Myself and others have written software that makes mobile spotting easy if not trivial. But we don’t have the range of tools for mobile alerts. Sure you may have mobile internet access then you can change an alert. So it’s not always possible.

In some cases spotting the activation is off or will be 2hrs late is fine. From feedback from spots users, they don’t want hundreds of progress spots (“at car park, summit in 2hrs” followed by “ground bad, running late, on air 90mins” etc.) So whether you should spot a non-spot is difficult to be precise over. Probably the best advice is if it’s not an actual spot then it’s not too likely you should be sending it.

What about the “pre-planning” topic? Is that not an alert? Well yes it is an alert. And it isn’t! The line between pre-planning announcements and alerts can be fine. What it’s not for is simply alerting. It’s for announcements about up and coming activations that are different in some way. A good example would be the recent activations of F/AB-001 Mont Blanc. Or in an activation of Denali in the US. Or say an activation in VK4 or VK8 which would involve some significant (even by VK standards) of driving into the outback followed trekking for a while. Or someone saying they intend to take their Scouts up a summit and get them to have some SOTA QSOs as part of their communications badge. Or in the case of the UK, someone saying they’re off to less frequently activated bit of Scotland in a few weeks and watch out for some rare WAB squares. Or a group of people are going to do some kite supported activations and hope to have a full-sized 1/4 wave for topband in use. All these are alerts but alerts for something that is a bit more than usual.

Most of us learn by example and seeing what others do. So from time to time is important to point out the better way of doing things so that things end up in the right place.

9

Totally agree Andy (partly my point!). There are different styles to educate with and I personally feel we should look to be tolerant and encouraging rather than slap down first time offenders. That’s how I read the FAQs and goodness knows I’m far from perfect myself and need a bit of guidance from time to time.
Peace and love to all :heart: