Is there a database query that will show invalid contacts? For example, someone thinks they made a good chase contact but they are not in the activator’s log. Or the activator made a mistake on the summit reference and there are no chasers logged for the mistaken summit.
Is that something only a database admin can do or is there a way for individuals to search for that info?
TIA
Dean ~ K2JB
For each activation there is the “Show who contacted me” button which will show all the chase QSOs logged against the activator’s call and summit for that UTC day.
I’m aware of that method. It’s tedious if you want to look at a lot of data. I was hoping SQL could do the work.
Dean ~ K2JB
SQL can but you can’t 
Or there is no way for a user to do what the “Show who chased me” code does across a range of you activations. Even then it’s not what you are asking for. What you want is something to iterate across all your activations, extract the people who have logged a chase with you, then do a logical exclude operation so that you get a list of people who have logged a chase that you didn’t log. And yes, the DB admins could write such a procedure.
But I’m not sure why you want to do this? I can guess at why but hearing people’s reasons helps to let us understand the perceived benefits.
“But I’m not sure why you want to do this?”
During a pileup, I often hear stations who mistakenly answer me when I haven’t called them. Band conditions are usually marginal and its an honest mistake. I don’t always go back and check my activator log against the Who Chased Me option post database load especially if I’ve uploaded a number of activations. I was just wondering if an easier way through SQL so that I might inform the chaser of their error and thereby contribute to the accuracy of the SOTA database. Yes for thee. Not for me. Signed- Former SQLBase DBA. Dean ~ K2JB
Like Dean, I do many HF CW activations with lots of chasers. Almost every activation has one or two who think they contacted me while I was contacting someone else. I can hear them easily through the real chaser’s reply to me. Often I immediately call “QRZ?” or even “NIL?”, but they almost never come back, because they cannot hear me, or they are already gone.
If they had actually heard me call the other chaser, they would not have called, or should not have.
Yes, it’s aggravating - because of the QRM - but these phantom “contacts” are a fact of SOTA life. A few chasers think that calling and sending their information is a contact. It’s probably not worth the additional complexity to check and verify contacts, The SOTA database has enough going on already, and verification would add little value.
How can we “advise” chasers not to call, unless they can actually hear the activator?
I also wonder if some of these phantom chasers are the same ones who tune up on my piles and S2S contacts?
I believe that the root problem is that many chasers have such a high noise level that they hear only a fraction of what’s happening during a SOTA session. They want the thrill of logging the contact, so they do the best they can, but the the result is QRM for the entire pile.
It’s not a big deal, it’s still a lot of fun to run a busy pile, and thank goodness we have very little malicious behavior…maybe the bad guys can’t hear us!
73
George
KX0R
sotadata uses a JSON api on https://api-db.sota.org.uk. Using this and some scripting with curl/jq/bash , the Python requests package or {insert your favourite scripting language here} this can be automated. It’s not SQL and you can only do it across data you have access to (i.e. your own activations, I guess) but it’s still possible to automate the tedious task.
That seems a laudable aim. There’s no way to contact anyone so if you did have a list of bad contacts you’d have to chase up contact details yourself.
FYI, there used to be a confirmation feature in the chaser honour rolls that showed if their QSO matched something in the activator logs. It was quite slack, it checked summitref, call, band, mode and date. The downside to this was no matter how many times we explained people to log what they heard / exchanged then chasers would “fish” to get the confirmation mark. An example would be I activated as MM0FMF/P and gave out that callsign. Then when logging I’d enter MM0FMF without the /P in error. If someone logged their chase as MM0FMF/P they would not get the confirmation mark. They would then check what I had logged and adjust their chase record to match even though they had logged it correctly in the 1st place. The result was some (not all but enough) chasers would deliberately log information they knew was wrong just to get the mark. We told people it didn’t matter but enough people kept doing it. So the confirmation mark was disabled.
I have a few busted calls from recent activations. One chaser obviously thought sending all his characters run together at about 10wpm faster than I was calling made him feel like more manly. I could not get his call and requested it several times but he sent it just once and faster than before. I sent NIL QRZ? and didn’t log it. I don’t see it as a “Show who chased me” QSO so I’ll assume he’s not a regular chaser. Another is a logged chase that didn’t happen. Sure there were a few calling at that time but I never sent the call in question or even a partial call that would match some of the letters in the busted chase. Not sure how that chaser thought I was working him?