Hi,
Is there a sure way to keep abreast of summit activation alerts as soon as they appear, such as an audible alert for a selected region. I am asking this as I am trying to chase a few summits that I know are not receivable from home but have a chance of getting from a local fell top 15 minutes drive from home. I appreciate that weather plays a big part in the decision to set off to do an activation or not so some alerts will be posted at short notice, because of this and although I check the list whenever I can I am finding I tend to only see the alert well after the activation has been completed.
All I need is to be made aware a wanted fell for my chaser list is being activated and with enough notice for me to be able to setup my own portable station on a handy fell near my home.
Any ideas welcome
Hi Derek,
I see you are a V/U/SHF chaser and after having looked at your chaser log, I see not too many different callsigns and all of them from the UK.
I’m pretty sure there must be a bunch of hams which are regular activators of those summits you need and they will probably be activating them all or most of the years.
I’d write those regular activators an e-mail explaining your situation and even giving them your email, phone number or whatever way is best for you to be contacted by them, and I’m sure they will be more than pleased to let you know before they activate the next time any of those summits you need.
That’s just an idea. Good luck with those chases.
73,
Have you tried the Sota Spotter app? I’ve got it to only show the spots I’m interested in, but I’m not sure you can do that for alerts. I usually check alerts on the sotawatch website and filter by region etc if I know I’ll have time to chase the next day or few days. I have noticed that many activators around here don’t put up an alert at all, but just spot on the day.
Thankyou for your excellent suggestion Guru, Yes I am predominately a VHF operator so most of my contacts are G/GM or GW. I have just 23 chases left to complete the GW/NW region most of which are one to six pointers and are hidden behind the higher Snowdonia peaks, hence the need for the extra height at my end. I have made the below list of the fells needed.
That app has an excellent notification service which can give both an audible and vibration alert. Depending on how you set it up, it will do this for specific activators, countries, regions or summits.
If you’re comfortable with programming or a bit of logic, there’s another possible solution where you create your own applet using the free online service of IFTTT at:
The term ‘applet’ makes it sound complicated but it’s usually just one logic statement.
I have two applets: one that emails me wherever a new spot appears on the WOTA website and the other emails me when someone spots on 5.3545kHz [that’s my favourite frequency on 60m] on the SOTA website.
Here are those applets as examples:-
You might be able to make one for GW/NW SOTA alerts.
You will have to see if the specific GW/NW summit is one you’re still chasing but that’s a trivial effort.
