I’ve been struggling to get out onto a hill to do an activation. The weather locally has been grim and the roads pretty atrocious. Could I ask a really bone question for clarification over the periods between scored activations; the rules state “Activator can only claim points for operation from a particular Summit once in any calendar year”. So if you’re struggling to get out could I activate the local summits 30 & 31 Dec 22 and then activate them again in Jan 23.
I appreciate it’s not ideal but hills I want to get to are along roads that haven’t been cleared of snow and I’m bouncing of the walls at home.
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Hi Paul,
You can activate summits as often as you like, as the weather conditions permit etc. However you only receive activation points for each summit once each calendar year. So in your scenario of activations on 30 and 31 Dec, you would get activation points for the 30th of Dec activation (provided it is the first time you’ve activated it this year); then for 31st Dec you get no activation points, then on 23rd Jan you’d get the activation points again.
There are other kinds of points though. While on summit when you work other activators on their summits, you get S2S points, which are made up of activation points and chaser points. Again you get the activation s2s points only once per year, but you get chaser s2s points whenever you work that summit as a chaser from a summit, the only limitation is that you only get the chaser s2s points once per UTC day.
To some operators, the s2s points are the best, because both stations are on summits, making the contacts quite unique.
I hope the above is helpful.
73 Andrew VK1DA/VK2DA
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Don’t forget you can claim the 3 winter bonus points for a summit you have already activated that year. Only the higher summits qualify but you might have one locally to you. Given your QTH most if not all of the 2 point hills around you should qualify.
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Some people have even activated across the midnight UTC time on December 31st, and entered their Jan 1st QSOs as a separate activator entry to their Dec 31st QSOs. Double bubble!
Of course only the most hardened of winter mountaineers and SOTA obsessives like John @G4YSS do that round here. But it is (understandably) a popular stunt in VK, ZL and JA!
(Some people prefer to enter cross-date activations as a single log, and this is possible too - as the “date of the activation” = the date of the 1st QSO. Reasons for doing this include getting the points if there were say 2 QSOs before 0000z and 2 after - or simply that the activator takes the view that one expedition = one activation. Either way, it’s entirely up to the individual, and entirely possible in the SOTA Database).
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