The original topic “Phantom QSOs!” appears to have closed after i posted my new entry, so i’ve created this follow-on thread.
I’ve tried to find the answer to my specific question by scan-reading the 108 previous posts and couldn’t find it. If it’s there somewhere and I missed it, my apology.
I did a 2m FM activation this morning in northern England. After uploading my log I see using the “Show who chased me” feature, one of the contacts listed has a Spanish callsign. Now, while I would love to have worked Spain on 2m FM with my 5W HT and whip, I think I would have remembered the QSO.
Somewhere above I think I read @MM0FMF wrote that any contact unconfirmed by the activator gets nil points for the chaser. So, do I need to take any action?, e.g. email the chaser telling him/her there was no QSO?
In the past I have received QSL cards for SOTA contacts that never happened. I even had one Chaser log a QSO with me 40 minutes AFTER I left the summit.
I believe the majority of SOTA participants abide by the rules and are genuine though in far from ideal conditions while activating its not difficult to unintentionally log a call sign wrong.
73 Chris M0RSF (last day of a weeks holiday in Anglesey)
I suffer visual impairment.
I had three different calls relating to my KI7MMZ. One was KI7MMZ’, and vision didn’t spot it. Thanks to a certain source, who shall remain nameless so as not to overwhelm that operator, I was able to correct my errors.
This morning, I logged three chases for 16/8 instead of 16/9.
Mis-keyed calls and times is a regular occurrence.
I seldom operate in North Idaho, USA (once), so that does look odd in the log book. Someday I’ll get my second chase there to validate that part of Mountain Hunter.
While the majority of chasers listen carefully before sending, there are still a few ones that intrud in the middle of the qso. Maybe they are not aware of the ongoing qso. Maybe they read only a part of the cw info sent and think the next report is theirs… who knows… however, they will not be in the log…
one of the chasers with a phantom qso was even someone with dxpedition experience…
hard to understand…
hope it is not intended, rather some inexperience and missing patience
I’m curious if there is a way for the average chaser to query the database to find phantom QSO’s. On occasion, I have noticed on the Who Chased ME log a call that wasn’t in my log. It seems that the timestamp is often during a huge pileup so perhaps someone thought I was answering them. Those seem to be one-offs. But…I may have been guilty myself when chasing and if so, would like to know it and delete the errant QSO.
TIA,
Dean ~ K2JB
Hi Dean,
Sometimes I’ve chased an activator with such a weak signal 229 and the like that I was quite unsure if the QSO actually was with me or somebody else. What I’ve done in those cases is making a note in my log saying check activator’s log.
After checking the activators log the following day or days, I’ve found both possible cases:
1- I’m in the log, in which case I simply remove the note “check activator’s log”.
2- I’m not in the log, in which case I simply remove my chaser contact from the SOTA database and also from my log.
One problem I’ve had sometimes is that the activator doesn’t upload the activator log in quite a long time. When this happens, it’s impossible for me to check and I finally leave it as a good chase, no matter what the missing activator log would have said in case it was uploaded to the database in a reasonable time.
But, after my activations, I have several times found after looking on Look Who Chased Me some callsigns that never actually had a QSO with me. I have even heard several times some chasers presumably making a QSO with me while I’m actually making QSO with some other station, then I find them on Look Who Chased Me and that makes me laugh!
I recently had the same thing start happening to me. After emailing one of the non-QSOs I got a reply back saying, “Huh. Don’t know. You’re in my log.” So I decided I wasn’t going to email offenders any more. I’m playing by the rules. If they don’t want to then I’m probably not going to change their minds.
As an activator I have changed my exchange habits to include always sending back the chaser’s call sign before the signal report. But this is CW I’m talking about. Phantom QSOs by phone seem much more bizarre to me.
One of the possibility’s is if they are using the 2 clicks auto logging on the SotaWatch3. What has happened to me several times is I put my cursor on the logging button for the activator I am going to chase. Once I hear the activator respond with my callsign I hit the submit button. Occasionally somewhere in that process a new SOTA spot will pop up and move the existing spots down one notch which leaves my cursor on the wrong activator callsign. So far I believe I have been able to correct all my mistakes when it happens but as everyone knows…stuff happens.
Tim - K5DEZ
