I apologize if this is has been asked ad nausem but if I am say 30 ft from my vehicle is that sufficient to NOT “be in close vicinity of, a motor vehicle.” ?
Yeh mate, as long as any part of you SOTA station is not connected to it in any way or possibly used as a wind break maybe ?? .
Thats what I think anyhow.
vk5cz …
KISS: Keep it simple, stupid! Don´t ask too much! Asking too much causes new rules… 
73, Alfred, OE5AKM
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You should really have to walk far enough away from your vehicle humping your gear to at least break a sweat in all fairness 
Declan
ei6fr
Exactly:
At least the 150 height meters required as celebrities should be covered on foot. (Bicycles are to be pushed.)
A slope of at least 15% is expected.
The equipment must have a minimum weight of 8 kg.
Summits with drive on and cable car are no longer rated!
73 Armin
Tom, first, if you didn’t know, there is a search feature on here so you can search for subjects to see what has gone before. You can do simple searches, say all posts containing “Ben Nevis” or for more complex searches such as “Ben Nevis” posted by MM0FMF before 1st July 2018. Just click the magnifying glass in the top right corner of the display and fill in the form.
Second, it is a proverbial question. At the simplest level the minimum distance you should be from a vehicle should be within the spirit of the program. If you set up by a vehicle but you can drive the vehicle away and your station continues to function, then your vehicle is not part of the station, that is important.
As for the distance, well it is not defined for a simple reason that we try, where possible, to be inclusive. If we set a minimum distance, say 250m, then we would receive many requests from people who have some mobility issues / disabilities requesting if they could be given some kind of accommodation to enable them to take part. We would then end up having to check whether 250m is possible or should it be 100m for one prospective participant and 25m for another. It’s a nightmare and a waste of time. Much better is to leave it down to the participant. If you’re fit enough to do 3000m of ascent and 40km of walking in day and active say 5 summits then it’s expected that if you can drive to a car park at the summit that you would put a bit of effort in and at least carry your gear away from the car a reasonable distance before setting up. In some cases this is not that easy. But we’d expect fit people to make an effort. For someone who cannot normally walk very far, the ability to drive to a summit allows them to do some activating. Otherwise they would be excluded from activating and that is a nice positive. Sometimes there may be no easy way to drive to the summit and operate without being right by your car. It’s up to you to decide whether you should have driven there in the first place or parked somewhere else.
If you check, the number of summits where you can drive into the activation zone, or summits where you can take a cable car or train into the AZ or very near to the AZ, are so few that doing them all doesn’t make a big difference to your possible score.
So your hypothetical 30ft depends on you. Do you think based on your abilities whether you should park further away? Hopefully this should explain why it’s left down to the activator.
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Is there a minimum quantity of sweat required? Seems like it may need to depend on the relative humidity 
Would it be ok if I just had a slight glow?
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Well I often perspire so I guess that’s OK 
Of course the challenge could be to take the car to the summit, even it there is a good railway to get there !
A whole sorry tale
73 de
Andrew G4VFL
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Probably boosted sales of that model vehicle. Big difference in UK and Aus judgements. I’m confident a similar offence here would earn a substantial fine but no gaol time.
73
Ron
VK3AFW
Andy,
Some people love rules because it prevents them having to make a decision. So, just for those folk, close proximity is defined as follows: Stand at your operating position. Throw a golf ball at your vehicle as hard as you can. If it hits the vehicle on the full or the first bounce, you are too close.
The young and fit will obviously be able to throw further. Well that’s fair.
In your case Andy you can throw your lucky anvil.
For the rest of us we can do what is reasonable.
73
Ron
VK3AFW 
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It’s been a godsend on windy days to keep the antenna in place Ron!
It was kind of you not to specify a cricket ball… 
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Well our American participants would have struggled to find one!
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Thanks for all the feedback. Originally I thought of this as a “better to ask forgiveness than ask permission.” But as Andy explained very well the reason for having an open ended distance is logical. I checked the summit on Google Earth and getting adequate separation should be no problem. For USA stations I hope to work you during the AZ S2S activity on the 28th.
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Don’t forget, you must also realise halfway up that you have left your morse key in the car and have go back for it :-).