In the Central Finland Radio amateur club we are planning to make a larger scale SOTA-activation about a month from now. The idea is to get as many interested hams in the area as possible to join us and give everyone an easy opportunity to try SOTA activation.
Our target summit is quite far away from any population centers, so the plan is to go quite near the summit by car, leave the cars to the side of the main road and then carry the gear to the top from there. The walking distance is not very much, but we’re compensating this by carrying quite a lot of equipment, including batteries so that we can try different bands and modes and spend more than 24 hours operating from the summit. The idea is also to make many local QSOs in the VHF/UHF-bands as well as the 80 meter band, to also promote SOTA chasing here in Finland. But don’t worry, we won’t forget all you unique-hungry chasers further away either.
We’re still discussing, whether each of us should use our personal callsigns or the club call. As I understand, from the viewpoint of SOTA rules there is no difference. Even if we all use the club call for our contacts, everyone who makes the required 4 QSOs will get their activation points. It would certainly be more simple to place the spots and alerts with just one callsign. On the other hand, there are a few “fresh” amateurs joining the trip, and they may be interested in possible new DXCC contacts and making more QSOs with their personal calls in general.
But which way is normally used in group activations and which is more convenient to the chasers, what is your opinion?
I would suggest using personal calls. This way chasers (and other listeners) are more likely to work more than one station than if only one callsign was used between the whole party.
If each individual op’s call is alerted on SOTAwatch, rather than just the club call, this will stand out as a big event and perhaps attract more attention. It is quick and easy to alert for several ops if one person is doing the alerting - just use the ‘Back’ button on your internet browser after submitting an alert, edit the callsign and submit again, etc.
Maybe one of you could use the club callsign but the rest use personal calls?
Good luck with your event. UFB that you are promoting SOTA in Finland in this way.
In reply to M1EYP:
Except that a chaser can only claim points for a particular summit once a day, so much as we encourage people to call multiple operators from the same summit many may not do so because of this.
You’re correct Dave, people only get the points once. But I’ve found SOTA chasers will rally round and work people for zero points if they know the activator needs contacts to qualify the summit. Normally a spot with something in the comment field about needing contacts will do the trick.
The OH activation sounds excellent fun. I hope I can get an S2S with the OH guys as I’ve not yet been worked by anyone from OH when on my own activations.
Thanks for your comments. Maybe working with personal calls is the better way after all. We’ll discuss this. We’ve been also considering the idea of making a special QSL card for this event (even with SOTA not requiring them), but I guess we could make the card anyway and just leave a blank spot for the call.
In reply to G3YMC:
Except that a chaser can only claim points for a particular summit
once a day, so much as we encourage people to call multiple operators
from the same summit many may not do so because of this.
We’re planning to go to the summit on a Saturday morning and come back at Sunday afternoon. This means that we would be making contacts on both days. Does this mean that a chaser can work us on both days and get a double score, or does it not count as it is still the same expedition?
In late November it gets dark so early in Finland that setting up a station late in the night wouldn’t be that pleasant… So the plan is to be at the summit before noon on Saturday and take down the antennas on Sunday before dark.
In late November it gets dark so early in Finland that setting up a
station late in the night wouldn’t be that pleasant… So the plan is
to be at the summit before noon on Saturday and take down the antennas
on Sunday before dark.
The full moon is on Sunday November 21. Also Mercury and Mars are visible on that date and they are close to each other. Hope the weather is not too bad.
LoTW is used by the expeditions and it supports currently the ARRL DXCC award (WAS is not relevant in this case). eQSL then supports eDX, eDX100, eGRID, ePFX300 (what is that?) and eZ40. And eWAS. So if somebody wants to get an OHCA or an other OH-award, the printed QSL card could be useful. Most of the regular chasers are working for the SOTA awards though and the SOTA database is fine in that case (just some thoughts on QSLs). To confuse things more there is also some activity on the World Flora Fauna award http://www.wff44.com/en/rules/ , but no electronic logging there as far as I understand.
