Hi,
I activated my first SOTA on Thursday. I made 20 QSOs and was quite happy. However, I entered the times of the last two contacts incorrectly, one of whom was a chaser who spotted me. I forgot to account for UTC time because I was getting ready to wrap up for the day.
I am worried that the chaser will not get his points.
Would it be ok to delete my log and submit it again? Or would this cause problems.
Thank you
Sure, that’s what we all do when we find errors in our activator log. If you made S2S QSOs in your activation, make sure you delete all of them before uploading the new corrected activator log.
Good luck and 73,
Guru
SOTA scoring is based on honesty and not on proof of QSO. The chaser will get the points if they log a QSO with you irrespective of whether you enter a log. There are undisclosed checks and safeguards to winkle out those who are tempted to cheat.
Yes, that is why there is a facility to delete a log.
We do not provide an edit facility as the effort to do so it not worth it. We would need to ensure that edits do not corrupt the database integrity, can cope with interruptions to user connections and discourage frivolous edits, never mind people editing the wrong activation etc. We do provide facilites that make the end result easy.
If you uploaded a CSV or ADIF log, you can edit/regenerate your CSV/ADIF file, delete the log you uploaded and upload the corrected log. If you manually entered the information, you can download the log in CSV format, edit the CSV file, delete the log you uploaded and upload the corrected log. Once you have performed this once or twice it is trivial and errors can be fixed in very little time.
You can edit CSV files in either a text editor (not word processor) or using a spreadsheet program. LibreOffice is a free open source equivalent to MS Office and is available for Windows, Linux and OSX if you do not have anything suitable.
You should take note that CSV/ADIF log upload now allows you to upload activation logs, S2S logs and chaser logs in one go. This means that if you uploaded a log that contained activation(s) and S2S logs and you wish to delete and reupload the activation content you will have to delete all the activation and S2S logs in that file or you will get errors. Despite the errors being highlighted in red and a “duplicate entry” warning appearing, this does confuse people still.
The Manage Uploads menu item exists to simplify re-uploading logs. If you use it the it will show you all the uploads you have performed (since May 2020 ISTR) and for each upload, how many activation, S2S and chase QSOs were uploaded. If you still have the CSV/ADIF you used, you can use the manage upload delete function to delete everything you uploaded in any CSV/ADIF file. You can then edit/regenerate the file, reupload and it’s job done where you can reward yourself with a nice cake/biscuit/beer/whisky/tequila/joint/speedball/nose-candy or fix… whatever is your poison 
Seriously, it’s straightforward once you have done it once or twice and there should never be a need to re-enter all the QSOs by hand. You can practice if you want by entering a fake activation etc. and downloading/editing/reuploading. Just remember to delete your practice entries.
If you need more help, just ask.
Thank you very much for the helpful advice. I will have a go today
How important is the time? I have guestimated a few QSOs in my time when submitting logs for a chase that popped up on HamAlert, for example, when I was away from a computer - do they need to be within a few minutes of each other? Is there a concrete part of the data processing that looks at this?
I am new to SOTA. I thought the times would have to match reasonably closely for the chaser to get their points, like in ARRL Logbook of the World, so I was worried that a one hour discrepancy might deprive the chaser of his points.
A best effort estimate is all that is needed.
Also, some people have logged me as M7AVX rather than M7AVX/P and one of my chasers has also made a similar error as I did regarding UTC time.
This shows that even for a technical hobby, where people have had to pass a written exam in order to take part, they cannot transcribe simple information. You can now understand why ATC has strict procedures for radio traffic.
I think that UK hams are worse for not knowing or logging the wrong the time. I’m not sure it’s because they’re just sloppy being on UTC for 6months of the year or if they are just more clueless than everyone else. It’s a problem easily solved, I have an LCD clock in the activation gear set to UTC that cost a wallet shattering £1.95 inc P&P from the Middle Kingdom.
When your hands are cold and you are wet and getting ready to pack up while QSO’s still coming in, we can all make mistakes.
An old mentor of mine, long dead, used to say “The man who never made a mistake never made anything”.
As it says in the rules, QSLs are not required. That means paper cards, e-QSLs or corresponding entries in other SOTA logs. It’s nice for everyone to log you correctly but it wont happen often. Hence the comment that ATC / pilots have specific procedures to ensure the correct exchange of information
You’ll find that lots of people will use what was spotted on SOTAwatch for the callsign/summitref and wont check whether that is correct. Some will see the error on SOTAwatch and spot the corrected information there. Also people have fat fingers and type the entry wrong having exhanged it correctly.
A long time ago we had the feature in the DB where it would match chaser logs with activator logs such that when a chaser QSO log matched an QSO in the activator log, the chaser display would show a confirmation mark. Can you guess what happened? Chasers would log a QSO and then see there was no confirmation mark, probably due to an error in the activator log and then edit their log to match the activator entry. They did this knowing they had originally logged the correct info but that confirmation mark had magic powers and was more important that accurate logs. Maybe they thought it was a modern form of the Philosopher’s Stone? But mainly they thought their logs would not count without the confirmation mark. This is despite regular discourse that the mark was not used in checking logs for awards and the statement in the rules regarding QSLs. Logging accuracy improved when the confirmation mark was disabled.
UK hams are still the worst at logging times accurately but you spotted your mistakes and are correcting or have now corrected them.