Hallo Ecki,
sei herzlich willkommen in der Sota Gemeinde. Sicherlich wirst du ein Handy dabei haben, um einen Spot loszuschicken. In cw ist das aber nicht notwendig, denn deine cw sota Rufe erreichen eine automatische RBN (reverse beacon network) Station, die deinen Spot selbstständig einträgt.
Aber vielleicht kennst du das alles schon.
Viel Spaß bei der Aktivierung und in dem pileup bei diesem schönen Wetter.
Vieilecht hören wir uns heute von meinem summit dm/sa-053 ab 11:00 utc.
73 Chris
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Moin Ekki
Nice to see you here. Enjoy the day and be curious as well as patient with yourself. Looks like you are prepared what to expect! 
73, Markus HB9DIZ
Good morning Ekki,
welcome to the SOTA community and and good luck with your first activation
You might want to post an alert on SOTAwatch or SOTLAS so chasers (who don’t read this) will know about your activation.
As Chris has already written here: RBN will pick up your signal if you call CQ on CW and a spot on SOTAwatch will be automatically created if you posted an alert in advance. This makes life much easier sometimes 
Enjoy the activation and have a nice day!
73, Roman
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Good to know Roman 
73 Chris
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Glad I am not the only newbie here. Hope to read a lot of your adventurous adventures here. 73 from Taiwan
Hans
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Hallo Chris ich hätte eine Frage zum RBN und Sota.
Was bewirkt genau den Spot in Sota Watch auf CW ? Wird jeder CQ Sota Ruf auf CW wenn er vom RBN erfasst ist in Sotawatch gespotet?
Gruß Michael
Hi Michael,
I will answer shortly: you really have to post an alert on SOTAwatch or SOTLAS (under ALERTS) in advance so that the RBN will catch your CW CQ. Your call will then appear as spot on SOTAwatch. If you have not posted an alert, the RBN will not forward your signal and hence there will be no spot at SOTAwatch.
73 de Chris, DL1GKC
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Ich habe den Eintrag von Roman so verstanden. Genauer weiß ich es aber auch nicht.
Hi Ekki,
RBN reported you this morning here :
http://www.reversebeacon.net/dxsd1/dxsd1.php?f=0&c=DF4OR&t=dx
and for DF4OR/P
http://www.reversebeacon.net/dxsd1/dxsd1.php?f=0&c=DF4OR%2FP&t=dx
If you put an alert on SOTAWatch you will show up on the SOTA cluster and you can get a bunch of SOTA callers
73, Éric
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Hello Eric!
Ok, thanks for the info. After I spotted myself on sotawatch the number of callers was already large enough, hi h. It’s been a long time since I had to handle something like a pile up.
It was a lot of fun, a fantastic day outside, sunny, temp up to 15°C. Antenna did not work at all on the metallic tower, no good resonance to find. But down on the ground it was perfect, just a small tuned vertical with one elevated radial, no tuner. On 20m I even heard the ZL and VK beacon on 14100. It#s amazing what you can hear when the surrounding is quiet radionoise-wise.
A lot of fun! Thanks to all callers, I will check how to upload the log later on.
73,
Ekki, DF4OR
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Ciao Fabio!
That was indeed nice to have a contect to an other Sota station, excellent. So I understand that a S2S qso is something special, right? What power were you using?
What I would need are some operating tips, maybe I missed them in the many links which are provided on the Sota websites.
I have to admit that I was a little bit surprised and overwhelmed by the pile up. It has been a long time since i have been working a lot of callers in CW.
So what is the standard for an aacceptable exchange? Do I give my Sota reference each qso? Or only every 3 or 4 qsos, expedition style, and the actual qso is just rst exchange?
73,
Ekki, DF4OR
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Hallo Michael,
RBN triggert einen Spot mit der aktuellen gehörten Frequenz und der SOTA Info aus dem Alert.
Kleiner Tipp: S-1 S+2 im Kommentarfeld heisst aktiv 1h vor der angegebenen Zeit bis 2h nach der angegebenen Zeit.
Zu deiner Frage : Es wird nur gespotete wenn der rbn Spot im aktiven Sotawatch-Zeitfenster liegt.
73
Ingo DH5ST
During our S2S you performed perfectly, my output power was 5 watts. Yes, for me the S2S are the icing on the cake of an activation!
73 Fabio
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Vielen Dank
Thank you
Ekki, just don’t forget to take a microphone with you from time to time resp. to append a short round on 40 or 60 SSB to meet also the speaking part of the SOTA gang! 
73, Markus HB9DIZ
Hello Ekki,
there are interesting discussions on the reflector, for instance here:
According to the general rules, chapter 3.7.1 “Criteria for a valid Expedition”:
8. […] QSOs must comprise an exchange of callsigns and signal reports, it is strongly recommended that the summit identifier be given during each contact. […]
On the bands, the summit reference is usually announced less frequently. Personally speaking, I give my reference in the first QSO on each band, during S2S-QSOs, upon request and else every 3 or 4 QSOs.
If the pile-up is dense, which is often the case on 40m, I keep the QSOs rather short, like contest style.
73, Roman
Hello Ekki,
welcome in the SOTA family! Be aware if you started once you can’t go back to the life before, never.
For more Information about RBNHOLE read this and this (Option S only in upper case!).
Hope to meet you on the bands.
73, Ludwig
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Hallo Michael,
zu RBNHOLE findest Du noch mehr Informationen in den Links, die in meinem vorherigen Beitrag stehen. Da habe ich interessante Konstellationen gefunden.
73, Ludwig