As detailed elsewhere. PNWSOTA is back. Josh et al. have setup an account on there for me as before. I was concerned the source to the old app had been lost. But I knew there was a backup somewhere, but where because it wasn’t in my git repo. So I have been wading through the dark depths of assorted server disks looking for it. And I found something probably only 8months old. That’s the best there is and it’s sort of working. It needs more work yet and a few tweaks and packages need setting up on the server… but we’re on the road back.
Andy,
What phone number for that??
Andy,
If the code was on the old PNWSOTA server, I can probably get you a copy from the last backup. I believe the backup was taken just a week or so before the old server died.
-Josh WU7H
I tried to use the SMS spotting tool here in the US today and no spot was posted on Sotawatch 3. I tried both NA phone numbers and same result – no spot. I did work yesterday. Fortunately, I had decent cell coverage so I was able to self-spot via SOTAwatch 3 directly.
73, Brad
WA6MM
Hi Brad,
Thanks for the QSO Today.
@MM0FMF can give the server a kick when he gets a chance.
73,
-Josh WU7H
I just tried sending a test spot via SMS NA and it worked fine.
73, Barry N1EU
I as well just did a test spot. Worked ok.
Malen
VE6VID
Seems like everyone was having finger trouble today.
Thu May 21 14:56:14 2020: M0JCQ bad frequency 21. 025
Thu May 21 18:30:19 2020: WA6MM malformed summitref Fr- 092
Thu May 21 18:35:10 2020: WA6MM malformed summitref Fr- 092
Thu May 21 18:39:26 2020: HB9GYX not such summit G WS001
Thu May 21 20:24:48 2020: N3BZ no such summit w7a cs000
Brad, in your case it was the space in the middle of the summitref. The software uses spaces to break the spot into its constituent fields so it’s no too simple to ignore or fixup spaces in the wrong place.
Sometimes my spotter will reject the spot because it is malformed and sometimes SW3 rejects the spot because there is no such summit found or the frequency or mode is invalid.
Ah…that’s it! Thanks Andy and sorry for the trouble. The display on my iPhone 5 is rather small and it’s hard to see in the bright Colorado sunshine! I’ve been doing a copy and paste of a prior text message and changing the summit ref and freq for my current activation. I need to pay more attention to those pesky spaces that may creep in ;-).
Thanks for your quick response.
73, Brad
WA6MM
I originally designed the format to be easy to type on the very common Nokia phones of the 2005-2013 period. Now with touch screens there probably could be a better format as the keyboards are better. But if you have a smart phone, using an app that can spot via a mobile data connection or SMS is probably better as they can catch a lot of the mistakes before sending.
I’m in the Android camp and use Droidspot myself. I have SOTA Spotter on an old phone that I must get moved over. For iPhone there is SOTA Goat and there is another iPhone app but can’t think of it right now.
SOTA Goat doesn’t have the ability to spot via SMS. I’m not aware of any iOS apps that have that feature.
On many summits here in Colorado I have poor cell coverage but I can usually get SMS messages through (not always though!). The only time I send SMS text spots is when I can’t access SotaWatch or other web-based sites. Most often I just rely on getting auto-spotted via RBNHole (CW). However, sometimes I don’t post an alert as I’m only going to a summit for S2S contacts – so RBNHole is of no use to me in those cases if decide to call CQ sota.
I need to upgrade to a newer iPhone as my iPhone5 no longer works with SotaGoat ;-(. I’ll get a larger display on my new phone!!
73, Brad
WA6MM
I was pretty sure there was something but 7h later and nobody has corrected you Josh, must be that way.