The MT have received a number of emails asking about the validity of the EA1/M0UOK activation of EA1/BU-016. Our attention has been drawn to a number of photos showing a 4x4 vehicle at the summit and a significant array of antennas. The photos show a setup which is obviously not valid for SOTA.
Chasers need to ascertain that the activating station is valid for SOTA (person powered final ascent, no generators, low impact operation etc.) These are normally givens but sometimes operators new to SOTA may operate outside the rules inadvertently. If it should turn out that the operations were not valid then unfortunately chasers will have to delete their claims on this summit.
Both Tony M3NHA, and myself Sara M6NHA worked EA1/M0UOK/P, Barry on EA1/BU-016 on 26th September 2012 and have now deleted this contact from our SOTA online log in order to abide by SOTA rules and principles.
We are pretty sure Barry wouldn’t have broken these rules had he known them. Thank you to Barry for the efforts involved and to SOTA for standing by their statutes.
Good luck, God bless to all activators and chasers and thanks for letting us know.
Both Tony and I find SOTA brilliant so once again cheers!
You have to have rules. Without rules, you would have people driving up summit tracks in 4x4s, taking generators, erecting massive antenna farms and doing activations that last a week! So the rules are there to try and make sure that sort of thing doesn’t happen.
In reply to MM0FMF:
Thanks for the information. I’ve now deleted my chaser entry in the database. I’m sure someone in MT will point out to Barry that he won’t be able to claim the activator points either.
He probably wasn’t going to anyway Dave. I don’t think he has any SOTA accounts. Usually when this sort of thing happens, the op concerned is offering the SOTA reference to attract more QSOs. They see they are on a SOTA location, and so use the reference to draw attention to this. However, they are not activators, and have no intention of claiming the points themselves. Because they are not activators, they are not aware of the rules they must follow in order for their operation to qualify as a SOTA activation. There have been several examples in the past of ops operating from cars from drive-on summits, and in the majority of cases, those concerned both (a) were not interested in registering as activators and claiming points, and (b) did not know the rules.
So it’s probably no more than an accident by a keen op looking for pile-ups. Certainly not someone who was setting out to cheat, that’s for sure.
