Today, policemen came to the streets of one of the Polish cities and from police cars are calling through a megaphone to let people stay at home. “We appeal, stay at home, reduce the risk of infecting yourself and your loved ones,” reads a fragment of the message.
The biggest problem of this epidemic is its unpredictability and incredibly aggressive expansion. We still don’t know anything about the virus except that it is very dangerous.
In another topic I announced coming back to the summits from the next weekend, after the 14-day isolation which I have until coming Thursday. I feel good and keep my fingers crossed that it will continue. However, if I leave the house, keeping a distance of 1, 2 or 5m is only a recommendation, but not a guarantee that we will avoid infection.
That is why I know that I will not return to activation until I am sure that the danger is over. Danger not only for me, but for all those who I can get infected by passing a virus from someone. I can move it, there are a million possibilities. Someone could left it on my car parked in the street a few minutes before my arrival, I have to use the car if I want to activate.
We are sitting at home and it seems to us that if we do not meet anyone outside, the rest does not matter.
But it does matter …
Update : the SOTA room in Peanut is doing very well, no viruses there
This morning I had a qso with first “fixed” testers ON6ZQ and EA2BD, both in perfect audio quality.
And just now, I had a brief talk with Jens HB9EKO who was walking down from his summit, so he was the first “mobile” tester, hi.
His data connection was not perfect, so there were some interruptions, but still, it looks very promising, check it out !
73,
Luc ON7DQ
Hi Pom,
I shared that info with my best intention and of course believing it was good info and good advise. If you believe it’s fake, I have no way to prove it’s not, so in order to avoid polluting the Reflector and misleading anyone, I’ve deleted my previous post.
73,
Hi Fritz,
I agree with you except for that I’d replace “stay at home” with “don’t get close to anybody”. Our whole family is staying at home for more than a week now (XYL&me home office and our daughter getting video lessons from her high school), I just enjoyed a few steps outside on my “home” summit (deployed in ~30min after leaving home) in the forest without any view. Having set up about 10m from the path in the woods, I felt isolated enough to provide “material” for all chasers. Summits like this are perfect as long as we can still do this. However, reading in the news that a group of 20 &"%ç£! broke into a locked park in Zurich to meet up and got caught by the police, I got my doubts anyway that the current government policy will last for much longer.
According to sources quoted by the BBC a temperature of 56 - 60 degrees Celsius is required to kill novel coronavirus, how long this temperature has to be maintained is not given. Temperatures of liquids/vapours this high will scald skin in a matter of seconds
If you’re googling for info on coronavirus, check the dates of the reports returned - many relate to the SARS coronavirus outbreak in 2003 which cannot be extrapolated to the current COVID-19 outbreak
Good quality on my RX side even with marginal 4G/3G coverage. I like the idea of having this channel for keeping in touch during a potential SOTA-inhibited period, or maybe also as a backtalk channel while activating. Good add-on e.g. for asking to try another band or hinting another activator towards a potential S2S while being stuck in the pileup with QRP
Hi Jens,
Several “back Channel” solutions for chasers to communicate with an activator on a summit have been suggested on this reflector over the last year and some have been tried out, with varying levels of effectiveness.
What I have found while activating, however, is that I don’t even have time to check for other activators spots for a possible S2S let alone have a conversation with a chaser or group of chasers - all of whom are each wanting you to do something slightly different. This process could work when there are two or three people activating together but for a solo activator, I don’t think it’s practical as the activator is simply too busy activating.
That’s just my feeling, however, other activators could see it differently.
Granted, all summits are different, and some do not allow leisure operating. But when they do, I like to check the SOTA spotter before I send my spot out to see if there is any possible S2S. Once I’ve tried to work what I can, then I send out my spot and get to it.
And, after I’ve exhausted the chasers, I’ll check the spotter again to see if any new S2S opportunities pop up. If it’s freezing cold, precarious conditions, etc., the S2S search takes a back seat.
I never used to bother with S2S until I started using VKPortalog. Now the spots come up automatically as I operate and I have come to really enjoy the additional challenge. That said, VKPortalog copies the spot info straight into the log, so it’s not exactly hard to get all the details right. I expect some other logging apps also have this capability. And many smartphones are now waterproof.
73 Matt
@ hb9eko; agree Jens, but only to SOTA activators like you ;-). @dd5lp; tnx Ed. I am not a doc. I am part of the food & beverage logistics of a group of 150 hospitals in Germany. My job is to secure the catering of patients and staff in times of emergency.
Stay healthy! Vy73 Fritz HB9CSA (DL4FDM)
And that’s it, the required time. In the morning I listened to a call-in show on the radio with Prof Alexander Kekulé. He’s the director of medical microbiology at the Halle-Wittenberg University. Somebody asked exactly this question and the simple answer was, that it was no good. Prof Kekulé also mentioned that garlic is perfect to prevent corona. If you eat tons of it, everybody will stay in a reasonable distance. No chance for the virus.
I also listen to the daily podcast with Christian Drosten, director of virology at the Berlin Charité and developer of the corona PCR test. In episode 14, he talked about this research that says a corona virus might survive several hours on certain surfaces. This research took place in the laboratory and in fact, they were able to proof some viruses ‘survived’ for a longer period. Due to Prof Drosten it’s highly unlikely that there will be enough active viruses left after some hours to do us any harm. However he reckons, that 10 or 20 minutes at the max is the time in real world conditions.
Every member of the team in health care facilities and those supporting them whether on-site or externally with staffing and logistics are essential at the moment - especially those providing food. Let me say thank you again for the essential work you are doing and support you are providing at the moment.
To get back to the thread. Provided the work burden on Andy could be managed, I suggest the MT should give some serious thought to permitting multiple summit activations during the remains 2020 to be awarded activation points. In my case I only have about 15 points that I can now achieve within a day’s drive from home. Staying remotely is now not an option. Whilst I take on board Tom’s opinion, it would make the effort feel to be valued and support SOTA.
We are in this for the long haul and extraordinary conditions require extraordinary measures however a total ban on fell walking or non essential travel as indicated in the Snowdonia example would be a very different matter.
I have been musing on this since the thread opened. My opinion (and I am just one vote in the MT) is that we should not allow COVID-19 to weaken and distort SOTA. Relaxing the rules even as a temporary measure (and remember that at this time we have no idea of how long “temporary” would last, and it certainly won’t be the same in all 174 Associations) is in a way a surrender to the virus. We have to surrender so much to it already, why add to that?
It might be possible to set up a temporary parallel activity, a “virus table” where the annual restriction is removed so you can activate a summit as often as you like (though only once per day!) or perhaps a band/mode per day, something like that, but that would be a matter for the IT team who are already pretty busy. Anyway, in my experience it can take an awful long time for the MT to organise something, often we find that something that sounds simple gets pretty complicated when you get down to details!
The key message in that BBC News report was "stay away from… holiday hotspots" To be blunt those people are either ignorant or selfish. There are plenty of alternative ‘quiet’ walks including summits they could have chosen. The news media will always zoom in on the minority behaving badly.
SOTA activators in countries still permitting “going for a walk” should do what most of us did in the BC Era [Before Coronavirus], i.e. find somewhere else in the Activation Zone away from people.
The problem is that there are a lot of people with sudden unexpected freedom to go for a walk, and with a bit of fine weather they are going to dam’ well exercise that freedom - and the main few dozen summits in Snowdonia or the Lake District are never quiet even in the depths of winter. Yes, we set up for SOTA away from the summit marker and away from the path, but accessing the summit and leaving it puts us into contact with other people, in numbers more like a bank holiday, and anyway nowadays we are not supposed to leave the path and contribute to an ever growing swathe of erosion!
There is growing pressure for a total lockdown. This is almost certain to happen. Anyway, they are advising people in my age group to self isolate for twelve weeks and talk of it extending to a twelve month sentence. I’m not sure that I wouldn’t prefer taking my chances with the virus!
Which is why some common sense is required. Even here in the Lake District there are plenty of lovely ‘unpopular’ hills which most of us living locally go to anyway especially in the summer to avoid people. I have to say people out and about here in my area are acting very sensibly.
That’s a bit sweeping. As others have already said, that’s not always the case. I see a few people out walking and sometimes pass at 2-3m separation without stopping… Avoid weekends and bank holidays. Activate at quiet times during the week,
My risk assessment says I’m at higher risk visiting the supermarket or my local pharmacy than on a solo country walk with the dogs or at a carefully-chosen AZ location for a SOTA activation.
