Not at all. It’s your activation to do the way you want.
What you will notice, if you haven’t already, is there are many chasers who will have figured out how you operate, they will know how accurate your alert times are, which bands you operate and in which order, and how long you spend operating. They figure this out so that when there are many active stations on air, they can prioritise who to work in which order.
Myself, I try to always work up from low on HF, I try to pick consistent freqs ending 33 or 88 near the QRP watering holes for CW (7.03233 / 7.03288 / 10.11833 / 10.11933 etc.) . I try to do SSB/CW most bands. A year ago I could have operated 60/40/30/20/17 on CW/SSB and spent a lot of time calling CQ for no QSOs. Now the sun is waking up and instead of it being a bit of hard work to get plenty of QSOs on the bands it’s a struggle to clear all the chasers and move to the next band. There’s something like 3x the number of QSOs than a year ago. With the days shortening and the WX getting colder there isn’t enough time to work all modes/all bands and multiple summits in a day like there was last Summer. So now it’s either fewer bands, fewer modes or fewer summits in a day. There isn’t enough time to do it all.
Then you get the dilemma of which bands? When the sun was asleep, 60/40/30 were the bands and we struggled for QSOs. Now the HF bands are coming alive with DX chasers and exotica and with the limited time if you play on 17/15/10m then all my dedicated LF chasers miss out. You have to compromise.
If you are on a strict time budget then put it in the alert “30mins max operation” and ration/cycle the bands around the summits if you want to work locals and DX. 40m one summit and 20m on the next. Rather than having to go QRT when there’s still a pileup.
You can’t please all the people all the time. So you have to settle on pleasing only some of them and you have to please yourself or SOTA becomes a chore and you think “Bah, I’ll just go for the walk and leave all these kgs of radios behind.” Which is the last thing anyone on here wants.
I generally do go on the Air on the mark. Never in 30 years of climbing mountains have I been so precise in my planning!
That’s a great idea. I’ll use that. However, I always finish working the pileup and put a call or two out for any QRP or otherwise patiently waiting stations.
Agree with @M1EYP above, really, it’s up to the activator and their operating practices, e.g. ‘S2S only please’ and so on.
Whilst it can be less than ideal in the heat of the moment to get unwanted information eg., for another type of award scheme, it’s not that much of a big deal is it? Apart from maybe that one time when I had a rambling six minute monologue about an OM’s wonderful new kitchen cupboards having just said I was sat in a storm and keen to leave. Anyway, I see no issue with /P stations taking priority, regardless of what scheme (if any); they probably made an effort to travel somewhere and sit in the pouring rain too…
Hi Guru,
I know we discussed some of this before. As WA7JTM pointed out, “S2S” really sticks out in our pileups here in NA. It has a musical quality about it on CW! I don’t prioritize “/P” in my pileups. I prioritize hearing “S2S” or DX stations. Of course, the DX stations are usually weak so I usually can’t work them until the louder NA stations subside. I do interrupt the pileup occasionally sending “DX?”. I’ll most likely do that more as the band conditions improve.
It’s always great to work you my friend!
Armin,
I might start a new program called “BOTA”…“Breweries On The Air”. The activations might be short though…esp doing CW…:-).
Great words !!!
CW operators much better understand what Guru meant when opened this topic
If somebody calls “summit to summit” on SSB/FM I have never met that it was no SOTA.
If somebody calls /P /P /P on CW it may mean GMA, WFF, & many many others
That is why on CW is better to call S2S - Guru does like this when he is on the summit.
I think this thread is opened not to show shame or discredit to anyone but just to indicate some area where activators should better understand each other.
I have to confess to feeling a little uncomfortable while reading some of the comments here. We’re all radio hams & there are so many different aspects to the hobby that we will all have slightly different interests…“live & let live” as far as I’m concerned. We’re all trying to have fun & enjoy our hobby. I will take a contact from anybody whilst on the summit, irrelevant of what awards programme they participate in.
Calling “summit to summit” to break through a SOTA pileup when you are not on a SOTA summit definitely isn’t “good sportsmanship”. That is incredibly annoying.
Using /p from a holiday location may be legitimate (especially if you are using a compromised antenna) but probably isn’t in the spirit of things if you have a full size antenna & 100 watts plus…perhaps /A would be more appropriate.
I’ve noticed this quite a bit when I’m activating & it’s one of my pet hates! I very deliberately ignore those calls (or give them the lowest priority in the pileup) even if they are 59+. They usually get the idea eventually!
I’ve had that a couple of times & it’s infuriating! I think some people who don’t participate in any award schemes just hear a CQ & reply for a rag-chew…they don’t seem to grasp the idea that I am in the middle of a pile-up or sat on a mountain where it’s blowing a gale & pouring with rain. They seem to think that you are sat in a nice warm shack or a car & have all day to humour them.
Ultimately it’s up to the activators how they manage their activations. To set their own pace & decide who they give priority in the pile-up. I generally tend to prioritise stations as follows:-
Summit to summit.
DX stations (anything outside of UK or Europe).
“High profile” chasers which I hear on literally every summit (we need chasers otherwise our activations would get very boring, so I like to keep them happy).
Portable or mobile stations.
Other known chasers who’s callsigns I recognise.
Low power stations such as those using a foundation callsign (& maybe to a lessor degree intermediate callsigns).
Chasers for other awards (such as WAB, HEMA, WWFF etc)…Though I will point out that on SOTA summits that are also valid for WWFF, I often work down the SOTA pile-up then when that’s dried up I post a spot for WWFF & then prioritise the WWFF chasers.
All other stations that are not known chasers.
Anyone who annoys me! This might include (but is not necessarily be limited to) people who give partial callsigns, tune up on the frequency, key over the top of the tail end of a QSO before I call QRZ, or do anything else that I consider to be rude or ill-mannered!
Hi James
I have a problem with signing /A when I stay in a holiday cottage in countries such as Scotland or France etc as a registered user of Logbook of the World. it would mean that I would need another certification from the ARRL for the F/G4OBK/A or GM4OBK/A callsign to permit me to submit a LoTW /A log for LoTW confirmations with the stations I have worked. I already have /P ARRL certification for all the countries I have operated SOTA from or operated from sites and cottages which are not SOTA so I do not want more administration and the added complication of more certification for /A callsigns.
So I will continue to sign /P and when operating will continue to send my full callsign as I would normally do when operating from home as a chaser,when I am operating from a non-SOTA location away from my home QTH.
Oh yes, the LOTW problem. Great if you are a DX’er in a fixed location…an administrative pain in the backside if you operate from multiple locations.
A problem which I overlooked when I typed that comment if I’m completely honest with you!
I do use LOTW but I only tend to upload QSO’s made from my home QTH (which automatically uploads from my logging software). I don’t generally bother uploading QSO’s made while portable. I’m sure that will anger some people!
I would argue that in your case you may have a valid reason to want to use /P. The original comment from @EA2IF was directed towards people who (he feels) use it unnecessarily to gain an unfair advantage & get higher priority in the pile-up, hence why I suggested that /A could possibly be an appropriate alternative.
As a side thought, /A isn’t used very often & is a little unusual to hear on the air. In that respect it might actually stand out from a pile-up.
I have to say that it’s not a problem which I personally have noticed & I don’t think that it’s worth getting upset over. As I said, “live & let live”.
IIRC, back when I first got my licence (in the days before Ofcom when it was administered by the GPO) /A was required for operating from an alternative address and was heard quite frequently. Now it is not a requirement and is rarely heard. I would guess that in time its meaning will be forgotten.
Guru’s original and valid point was not the use of a single /P. It was the use of repetitive use of the /P /P /P which CW operators in Europe use, including me when trying to draw the attention of the operator through the pile up of chasers when the other operator is calling CQ SOTA or working a string of Chasers. On phone he rightly criticises (in my opinion, but not all think the same way) the use of the statement “summit to summit” when the operator is not on a SOTA summit but is operating from an FF or POTA etc etc.
Like Guru I don’t take part in these schemes as in my opinion they lack the credibility and accountability that the SOTA concept has. Also from what I have heard on the air, the standard of operating in FF/44 for instance, is also lower than the standard of operating within SOTA. You may have found the same James.
Yes, keeping tabs of LoTW certification is a pain when you have activated from over 20 countries and submitted logs for them all. I started doing this before I got into SOTA in 2005 from when I operated holiday DXpedition and contest operations from some of the the rarer EU countries.
Not quite true. Reading the first paragraph of Guru’s original post, I don’t see anything about “repetitive use of /P”.
It refers to people using /P when “not operating SOTA” or “just from a holiday location”. I don’t agree with opinion expressed but that is what I was commenting on.
Guru does mention the repeated use of /P in a later post (5th post of the thread). I didn’t originally comment on that but I am in total agreement. This isn’t good operating practise in my opinion.
As you probably know from our previous conversations, I’m not a CW operator so I can only comment on my experiences on SSB. It’s something which I’ve experienced a few times & usually gets given the ‘I’m going to pretend that I can’t hear you’ treatment mentioned in my earlier post!
I have no doubt that the repetitive use of /P probably does happen more on CW than SSB & yes that would annoy me.
In many countries a radioamateur is pressed by law to use /P when he is not operating from his normal home base: WWFF GMA or not.
What you say is that someone who is not /P in SOTA is not allowed to chase/make SOTA contacts or if he chooses to do so, break the law and use his call without /P
Please complete your comment saying what call one should use when in fact being /P but not in SOTA.
A chaser being in a WWFF /P cannot know beforehand if you are, or are not interested in WWFF Keep in mind as example how many swiss SOTA mountains are also in WWFF resulting in a chaser mix WWFF and SOTA which can result in a park to park QSO.
I give an extreme example:
EA6/SD-001 is WWFF, is IOTA is SOTA and if I am not mistaken also Lighthouse (lighthouse not any longer in use)
73
Patrick ON4BCA
You have to be carefull there, Phil. At first reading you seem to come perilously close to saying that any summit that is not a SOTA summit can’t be called a summit. No doubt the participants in GMA, HEMA, WOTA (and Satan knows what else nowadays!) will disagree! I can’t comment on credibility or accountability for some of these schemes but FWIW WOTA is carefully defined.
Like many others who have hiked in LD I hold dear old Wainwright in great respect, but I feel that for me one scheme is enough - tho’ I sometimes wonder why someone doesn’t do the same for Poucher, who’s smudgy photographs guided the footsteps of my generation!
I have a Poucher here, yellowing well in the old bookcase. Black and white photos…
I didn’t wish to suggest that other scheme particiopants such as FF HEMA etc are unwelcome callers, only that they shouldn’t call “summit to summit” or attract attention over other chasers by repeating the /P suffix in CW. I’ll work any callers who operate in the way we should expect, and put up with them giving me the trig point ref, GMA, FF, HEMA whatever. They probably don’t know I am only interested in SOTA. I don’t waste pencil lead in writing the references down, which is up to me. The long established WOTA scheme (since March 2005) is the exception to the rule as I take part in that (330 summits described in 8 books if you count the outlyers) so I always note those references down or look the reference up from the Wainwright name when I get back home to enter my log into the WOTA website and my own log.
I lost my B/W Pouchers but have a collection of his colour photo books, he was a much better photographer than his guides would lead you to expect! Sorry, off topic!
James is right on this, my first post didn’t speak about that and it only mentionned the /P. I admit my original post wasn’t precise enough and that’s why it produced so many reactions, which required further precisions from me. Also the word Cheated I chose for the title and I used later in the text of my post needs some precisions which I didn’t provide in the posts and I’ll try to do it now.
As it’s been already explained in previous posts, the use of /P is mandatory in several countries when transmitting from a location different to the official base one of the licensee. This is not the case in EA and some EA activators don’t use the /P, but many still do. I keep using /P because it’s more convenient for my eQSL management, as I have an account for EA2IF/P and another one for EA2IF, so all my SOTA activation logs go to the EA2IF/P account.
If a ham is operating portable and therefore signing as CALLSIGN/P, the fact that he might get the activator’s preference in the pileup in the hope that it will be a SOTA to SOTA contact because he’s using the /P suffix is just a collateral effect he can benefit from and there’s nothing wrong with neither, the activator nor the chaser.
What I don’t enjoy is when this chaser /P who is not is a SOTA summit but on a GMA, HEMA, WFF, COTA or whatever, after having got the preferenced treatment from the activators and the rest of the chasers in the pileup, wastes everybody’s time by sending all sorts of references he is activating despite the activator never requested them.
Perhaps, the word cheated doesn’t correspond to my feel in this situation and some other words like disappointed, annoyed are more accurate.
The fact that callsing/P draw my attention in the pileup during my last activation and made me ask for QRX to all the other chasers is something nobody can be blamed of, it’s just a lucky situation he benefited from. What annoyed me is that he spent our time (the other chasers time, my time and his time) sending me those GMA and WFF references, which I never asked for and I’m not interested in. As he wasn’t activating SOTA, I would have expected a standard quick QSO and only in case I had asked for his SOTA reference, I would expect him to say SRI NO SOTA. At this point it would be up to me (the activator) asking or not for other possible references, but it’s clear now that I wouldn’t have asked for any, as I only work SOTA at the moment.
The word cheated is definitely accurate for those calling /P /P /P /P repeatedly in the pileup and then not being in a SOTA summit. That is, in my opinion, pure cheating, something I’ve heard sometimes and something I’d like to never hear again.
