It must be the normal scoring that does something with /M calls then.
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âŚand in my opinion what makes something a contest is whether someone elseâs performance can suppress my achievement.
In the 12 metre Challenge, prizes were available only to the top scorers in each association. Someone else achieved a higher score, and you were pushed out of the prize zone, so it was clearly a contest of sorts.
With this Challenge, âA certificate will be available showing your name, call, association and score.â Thereâs nothing there about it only being available to the top performers, so, assuming I achieve a score Iâm happy with, I can claim a certificate whether or not anyone else achieves a higher score than me. The competitive types will inevitably be trying to get to the top of the charts, but after the event they can all get certificates thatâll differ from the one I could get only in the details on them. Sure, if you compare two certificates youâll be able to say this person scored more than that person, but viewed in isolation, whoâs to know?
Oh, and even in contests itâs considered bad form not to work other participants because you might end up giving them more points than they give you, or to only work particular participants in order to boost their scores, so Iâm going to assume that no SOTA participants would pull those tricks.
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Rather than read thru hundreds of posts I will just ask a question.
I work W7ABC from a SOTA summit, say w7a/PN-100, on ten meters.
The next day I work W7ABC from a different summit, say W7A/MS-100.
So I get 2 multipliers for the two different summits I activated.
The question is.⌠do I get two multipliers for his call? I think the answer is no.
Once I work a station from a particular summit I can never get another âunique stationâ multiplier for working him, even if I work him from a different summit.
thanks
Pete
WA7JTM
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Correct.
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Thanks!
Doesnât mean I wont work them again, but I might choose to work the unique station calling me first.
Then other thing that I suspect will happen, again, is that the activity on bands other than Ten Meters will go down a bit. That happened with the 12 Meter challenge.
Portable ops only have so much time to spend on a summit, and only so much battery power to use up.
Thanks again
Pete
WA7JTM
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Already the pattern of band activity has been changing as we near sunspot maximum conditions, it will be difficult to distinguish this from the effects of the challenge. Ten was awash with activity this afternoon, but SOTA only made a small contribution to this. On the other hand 60m has been one of my mainstays as a chaser, in recent years about 40% of my chases were on 60m, but I have not had a single chase on 60m since last September, which is when the higher bands started to display their potential. Activity chases the MUF, but ten is also a good prospect for sporadic E so it may draw activity even when the low activity side of the sun faces us and the SFI dips. AFAIC this is a happy time on the higher bands even without SOTA and I intend to âfill my bootsâ as the saying goes!
Indeed Brian. I have done quite a bit of 15-12-10 and not much 60-40-30-20 operation in the last months for the reason you state. I was aware of this yesterday when I decided to listen on 40m. The WAB net was in operation so I went and offered an oddball square to the WABers and had some pleasant operation till I switched to CW and the mayhem started!
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Iâm not experienced with this but I thought 10m was in really great shape this morning on GW/SW-001, managed a VU2 for the log.
40m was the only other band I where I spotted and it was pretty poor, difficult to find space with all the âCQ contestâ and suchâŚ
I think Iâll take the above advice and have plently of options for the higher bands in the coming months.
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We shouldnât feel bad that there might be a bit less SOTA activity on other bands for 2024 or beyond. It might be ten years before we have these condx on 10m again. Besides, on every activation we activators choose to exclude most bands and most modes. We canât please all chasers all of the time.
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Just to clarify and settle the dispute between my two esteemed MT colleagues, yes the /M, /P etc are ignored when the database checks to see if 4 unique callsigns have been worked in order to qualify an activation.
In the Challenges, M1EYP, M1EYP/A, M1EYP/P, M1EYP/M will all count as callsign points (once). However, this probably needs attention and changing to mirror the check for 4 unique calls for qualification. This is because at some point this year, the new Ofcom licensing rules will take effect and people will have a free-for-all with these callsign extensions.
Unscrupulous participants might give their mates points as G9ABC/A, G9ABC/B, G9ABC/C etc. No-one would sink to that surely? Well, youâd be surprised!
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Can the software not take the basic callsign e.g. G9ABC and ignore all suffixes after the stroke character? If not, would it be a big problem to modify it? And [Am I missing something?] is there a good reason to discriminate between one suffix e.g. /A and another e.g. /B ?
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In some jurisdictions (and SOTA is a global scheme), visiting amateurs may be required to use callsigns of the form H0ME/CY (where H0ME is the operatorâs home country callsign and CY is the prefix of the country being visited).
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Yes, it does in respect of counting the 4 contacts for a qualification of an activation.
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Can I thank the Mt for the challenge, for me the multiplier system will give me the encouragement to go back up this hills, including the humble 1 pointers that I might not have re-visited. I agree with Brian G8ADD, that as the sunspot cycle changes activity is also likely to change. When I started SOTA in 2016/7 at the bottom of the cycle I found that for inter G 80m - and the additional hike to the ends of the antenna worked very well, now 40m works well and 80 is a struggle unless it is nearly dark. Maybe I would have experimented with 10m, but now I have given it a try from every summit. The question âDoes the challenge work?â might be answered from the data in a few weeks and months time - âDo we have more activations?â.
PS if it is difficult to keep all the people happy all of the time it would be bloody impossible to keep all the radio amateurs happy all the time, even a simple question like âWhich Antenna is bestâ has a habit of going nuclear⌠:-). Thanks again to the MT. Paul
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Having constructed a 10/15/20/40m switched dipole (inverted-V) last year, and as today was my first SOTA activation of 2024 (thanks to COVID and Pneumonia) , I thought I would give 10m ago. I did try 40m to start with but the band was pants (chocabloc with contesters I think), so I gave the new band (to me anyway) a try. Having done very little on 10m to date, I wasnât expecting great things, but to my surprise three QSOs (and S2Ss) were had in no time at all. First was Tom (M1EYP/P) on Gun (G/SP-013) who was just a few miles away from me - Shining Tor (G/SP-004). I usually wear headphones with the KX2 but no need on this QSO as I could hear Tom with the headphones on the ground - he was 60dB over. Next was Peter (M0PJE/p) who was on G/WB-023, but disappeared mid way through the QSO. I hung around for a bit, but a quick WhatsApp message from Peter alerted me to the fact he was having battery problems. I therefore went chasing for a S2S with Kyriakos (SV1RVJ/p) on SV/AT-012. Brilliant 55 both ways and almost as loud as Tom on the Gun. I knew Peter would be back so I hung around for a bit on 10m. After a quick hike back to the car (to fetch a new battery) Peter was back and we concluded the QSO and S2S. Signal report 53 both waysâŚ
This is the most contacts (and certainly S2Ss) on 10m in a single day that I have managed since I started SOTA back in 2021, but to be fair Iâve only had a 10m capable antenna since September. I guess I now need to work out how to haul up (and construct) the 4 element 10m SIRIOs beam on Shinng Tor for the next EU US SOTA weekend. With such a setup it might tempt Martin away from playing with boatsâŚ
JKS
Dave
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I was intrigued to find that I could hear Tom here in Birmingham, though not strong enough to copy a report. From that summit it is better than on 2m FM where I canât hear him. I have been ignoring 10m activations in the UK but will now check every one. I did listen for you but no go, I think the ground wave couldnât jump the Stiperstones and Long Mynd.
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Thatâs an intriguing question Brian. 82km? Surely too far for ground wave. It must be some kind of very short skip. I have always been interested in how short skips can get on HF bands. I have been surprised whilst activating on 10MHz and above (30m and below!) to be worked by G stations.
Reading this blog suggests it might be some NVIS depending on antennas at both locations.
https://www.transmission1.net/viewtopic.php?t=11541
He says "Received wisdom states that the shortest skip distance from sporadic E on 10m is about 300 miles" but looking at the radiation lobes of antennas there will also be some energy going off at very high angles.
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If you had more aerials and reception reports you may be able to figure the propagation. It could be just a path that works for groundwave. Or it could be troposcatter. Thatâs the most common mode used for 2m non-LOS contacts. When I ran a single 13ele Yagi and 150W I had a Tropposcatter range of 300km from an QTH 22m ASL. The limits were mountains constraining if me and my partner could see the common scattering volume. A SE path from The Wirral was into the Cheshire Plain and so London and the SE were workable. Now Tom wasnât running 150W nor a 13ele antenna but the free space loss on 10m is 18-20dB less on 10m. I donât know if troposcatter at 10m frequencies is as effective as at 2m, does the particle size that does the scatter affect scattering? The Six Mitre Group suggests troposcatter is frequency neutral from 144MHz to 10GHz. Probably itâs not as good.
It could have been a long meteor reflection. Iâve regularly heard meteor âpingsâ on 6m lasting around 2mins. Could have been a big meteor and weâve just passed the maximum of the Quadrantid sower.
Tom uses a 1/4GP on 10m. Thatâs an omni DX-y antenna with a good low take off performance. Itâs possible you were hearing side or back scatter from a SpE cloud 1500km from Tom and yourself. Scatter is often gritty/dirty in sound but possible he wasnât strong enough for you to be sure.
Lots of possibles to account for the signal. Itâs for me, where my job was dealing with causal events: same software does same things all the time, why I find radio so absorbing. Radio has propagation trends you can rely on but the day to day is often very different.
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I returned to Tomâs signal several times and it was consistant. It did sound somewhat muffled, suggesting a scatter mode, but Iâve always associated that with high power. Anyway, its alerted me to something to look out for, perhaps it will happen again when I have a better antenna installed.
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As I recall from my youth viewing the historical documents [think Galaxy Quest] of social life in 1970âs USA âSmokey and the Banditâ they used CB radio (29MHz FM) to âworkâ inter-State as well as locally.
Our universal language translator is still working on:
Talk to me, mâboy! Hold on to your ass.
The fact that you are a sheriff is not germane to the situation.
The goddamn Germans got nothinâ to do with it.
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