Fals spots

Besides me no one disturb a lot of misinformation and false KU6J spot?

Feri HA7UL

I can’t find a KU6J spot, can you give more details please?

Brian

In general I like the KU6J service. With you I suffer from incorrect spots. Unfortunately most errors are blamed on the activator who set an alert long time ago. In my opinion there is room for improvement

73, Hans PB2T

Brian, Here is the most recent one with incorrect REF.
Fri 10:49 OK2PDT/P on OK/VY-067 28.0611 cw
*CQ CQ at 26 wpm. S/N=1 dB at OL5Q {Via RBNGate} (Posted by KU6J)

73, Hans PB2T

The self-spot for the correct summit got through a few minutes after RBN picked up the CQ that generated the spot, but RBNGate had seen a self-spot from an earlier summit, and went with that because that’s what it knew about. The trick, if you’re relying on self-spots, is to get them in soon enough that they’re there before RBN hears you CQing…

Generally, if you see a spot that’s come via RBNGate then it’s worth double-checking the reference. The frequency will be good, and that’s what helps most.

…and if they really bother you, then there’s always the option of using filtered spots like those you can get through http://www.mathieudavid.org/webapps/sotawatchfilter/ and adding RBNGate to the exclude expression.

Indeed for those activators who are consistently spotted in the wrong place, the fix is for the activator to request no RBN spots in the alert. They need to remember to ask not to be spotted in every alert which can become annoying. Or they can ask to be excluded permanently in which case it will ignore them.

It will never be perfect because it is based on incomplete knowledge. The number of inaccurate spots is a very small percentage of all the spots made and surprisingly, some activators are consistently mis-spotted compared with other activators.

If the activator keeps his/her alerts up-to-date and accurate, the spots look after themselves.

Here I don’t agree. The system is supposed and expected to support activators, who may have no internet access or cellphone coverage

73, Hans PB2T

Describe how you would fix it then.

Have not had a spot with wrong information via RBN gate yet, most times its a ZL or VK4 who hears me, I hardly have to re spot if I swap to cw from ssb, just call CQ SOTA on cw and it appears on my phone.
magic

Andy, I am not a programmer. Therefor I have no fix. I just ask not to blame the users and hope that programmers will support their users and find a solution.
For this specific example we can’t blame OK2PDT who selfspotted OK/VY-067 at 09:04 and who comes up on OK/VY-065 an hour and a half later.

Hans

Nor have I, and I would be lost without it on many of the EI summits where there is no cell coverage.
I think the secret is in getting the alert correct in the first instance especially where there are multiple summits in a relatively short time frame!

73

Victor GI4ONL

I have no idea the cause of the problem, but I too have noticed many incorrect RGN Gate spots over the last few weeks. Usually the band and mode are correct, but the frequency is wrong. For instance you might see a station who is actually on 14.061 spotted on 14.033. Again, this is just my observation and I have only noticed this problem recently.

The problem is not that RBN gets confused when people suddenly change summit faster than it expects, or that it spots people where they said they would be when for whatever reason they went to a different summit. The problem is people see a spot in black and white on their computer and assume it is gospel and 110% accurate. The onus is and always has been, on the chaser to make sure they know the callsign & ref of the activator. If they don’t hear the call&ref themselves then they can’t blame anyone but themselves if the spot they believed in was wrong.

The fix is not to change the spots or spotting robots but to accept that spot are indicative of an activation taking place and no more. It’s up to the chaser to use their ears to confirm the spot is valid when they work the activator and if it’s not they should spot the correct info.

That is what I have done, and I have never regretted it.
:wink:

73,
Walt (G3NYY)

I’m not a programmer, too, just an all-thumbs user, but I know that there is often an aching gap between what is desirable and what is practicable! Our programmers are knowledgeable and enthusiastic, if there are problems they are not due to neglect, they are more likely due to the problem being intractable.

Brian

In 2014 there were 666 different CW activators who have logged at least 1 activation. To my knowledge only 2 of those 666 have opted out of being spotted automatically by RBNgate. So far in 2015 there are 513 CW activators who logged at least 1 activation. Of those only 1 has opted out.

The overwhelming majority are happy with how it works, warts and all.

You make it work for you, simple. Three approaches:

  1. Activator posts as accurate as possible alerts, and updates these from smartphone between activations to keep them as accurate as possible. This is what I do, and it works very well.

  2. Read up on the RBNgate instructions at: RBNGate by KU6J - Automatic SOTA Spotting
    This includes all the “how to” information about changing the default parameters of the “1 hour before up to 3 hours after” window, and other ways to customise / personalise.

  3. Opt out completely.

Given the above three options, I would consider that if RBNgate spots me incorrectly, then it is entirely my own fault.

If station is being spotted on the wrong frequency it’s because either:
They have QSY’d since they called CQ or the spotting skimmer is returning the wrong frequency. Of the rare instances I’ve seen this, it’s always been the skimmer. An email to the skimmer owner normally puts it right or they remove it from service.

My observation is that there are far more human spotting errors than robotic ones!
Pete.