This morning I decided to take a trip to my local summit Leith Hill (G/SE-002). This was not my first visit this year. On the previous occasion the weather deteriorated during my ascent, and it was impossible to operate. Today it was bone dry underfoot with a brisk wind blowing across the summit.
Having set up just before 11:00, I sent an SMS spot to say I was on 5260 CW, and waited for the pile-up. Absolutely nothing! I double-checked that the SMS had been sent, and all appeared well. Perhaps nobody was interested in 60m.
Confident that RBNgate would now detect and spot me, I moved to 18080 and called CQ SOTA for several minutes. Again nothing! Everything appeared to be working at my end, so maybe it was conditions.
Next I tried 7032.5 for guaranteed success. G4SSH found me after the second or third CQ (thanks for the spot Roy), and a few more callsigns trickled into the log over the next fifteen minutes or so. It was not, however, the crazy pile-up that I had anticipated.
I then moved to 10117.5, but only found one, non-SOTA, caller after numerous CQ calls. With nine QSOs in the log I decided to retreat from the increasingly cold wind and return home.
Back in the warm shack I tried to make sense of what had happened. My original SMS spot, sent at about 10:55 appeared on SOTAwatch at 11:58 - just over an hour later! So it was no surprise that subsequent band changes did not appear, despite being detected by RBN. I still have not worked out how the SMS message got delayed though as the network (Vodafone) acknowledged it as sent.
I think there will be one phantom QSO in the database too. I was called by a weak DK7ZH, but he was having great difficulty hearing me. I kept sending his callsign and report, and we finally made it. However, another station with just the first letter in common insisted in sending me an RST and thanking me for the QSO. He is not in my log! Perhaps I was not really the 559 he sent me!
Next I tried 7032.5 for guaranteed success. G4SSH found me after the
second or third CQ (thanks for the spot Roy), and a few more callsigns
trickled into the log over the next fifteen minutes or so. It was not,
however, the crazy pile-up that I had anticipated.
Les,
there has been mention several times of long delays with the SMS spotter since Andy transferred it to a different ISP.
I find it always best to put up an alert in advance and leave it to RBN to do the spotting!
Saying that, RBNgate failed on one of my activations late last year and I was left to rely on the ears of chasers!
I’ve been finding 40 metres very poor lately.
My chaser log only shows 2 contacts on 40 in the last 2 weeks and one of those is you today The band is just hopeless at the moment.
Last week I managed 1 solitary contact on 40m on one of my activations; normally it’s a wall of sound.
30m seems to be better during the day but at the moment I find 20m to be the most pleasant band to work with easy European stations and lots of US always keen for a contact.
RBN shows you were picked up OK so there’s no real reason why there were so few takers. I think for low scoring, regularly activated summits, if you’re not on 24 Mhz people don’t bother any more
(flame proof suit on)
Here’s an example of when I was receiving delayed SMS messages (it’s from G4ASA in this case)
Thu Jan 30 16:01:27 2014:
+CMGL: 10,“REC READ”,"+44xxxxxxxxxx",
"",“14/01/30,11:17:24+00”,
! g tw004 10.120 cw qrv now
I’m not sure if the time in the message is when the sender sent it or when it was received by my provider but it says “14/01/30,11:17:24+00” and my logs says it handled the message at "Thu Jan 30 16:01:27 2014 which is a delay of about 4hr43.
Here is Les’ message from today:
Thu Mar 20 11:58:40 2014:
+CMGL: 1,“REC UNREAD”,"+44xxxxxxxxxx",
"",“14/03/20,11:58:20+00”,
! G se002 5.260 cw
The time in the message is “14/03/20,11:58:20+00” and I received it at “Thu Mar 20 11:58:40 2014” which says I handled it 20 secs later.
If there was a delay then the explanations are:
the delay was between your phone and your provider.
the delay was between your provider and my provider.
the delay is different to the delays I have had in the past.
I just sent 2x test messages which took less than 30secs to arrive.
I don’t think it was my local cell site this time. But it is weird.
I decided to look at the various “sent”, “outbox”, “saved” and “drafts” folders. They all report empty, despite the fact that I know I sent a text today because SOTAwatch received it. As I never clean out those folders because I use the phone so little, something must have gone “tilt”.
I was already looking at replacing my phone with something newer and better because a few times it has just switched itself off with no warning despite a full battery. Now it seems I have another good reason to invest in some new technology.
Just had a similar problem myself today on NP-031. My self spot
was sent at 14:26 but only got through to your server at 15:03
Sun 15:03 M0RCP/P on G/NP-031 145.500 fm
*Spot[M0RCP]: calling now (Posted by SMS)
Being out of range of 3G coverage I was unable to confirm that my spot
had (not) turned up. Fortunately G8VNW had already passed on the news to me
that the spot had not appeared and had placed the following one for me manually:
Sun 14:37 M0RCP/P on G/NP-031 145.400 fm
Rick here (Posted by G8VNW)
I suspect the problem lies somewhere with the ISPs (mine is currently
Tesco mobile)
It’s annoying when this kind of thing happens. I managed to send 2 duff spots, one with silly callsign and one badly formatted and I wrote the software!
I’m not sure if there is a quality of service level for SMS, i.e. no delivery latency statement, just a promise to do the best to deliver it.
In reply to MM0FMF:
I think it also happened to Victor, GI4ONL today too.
This spot:
Sun 10:58 EI/GI4ONL/P on EI/IN-009 7.032 other
*Spot[EI/GI4ONL]: 2 mins (Posted by SMS)
In reply to G4ISJ:
You are quite correct Pete, I sent the text at 10:23 but it didn’t appear until 10:58. Thankfully DL1FU spotted me at 10:27 and I just assumed my spot had gone up, later in the day I sent another 2 spots which appeared virtually instantly afterwards.
In reply to MM0FMF:
FYI, one of my spots yesterday appeared about 15 mins after we went QRT on GW/NW-015. Sent from Three. We were late out, but not quite that late.
The band is just hopeless at the moment.