I try to go armed with locator and WAB square as well as SOTA reference, but usually (unless the summit’s activation area has grid boundaries passing through it) the first two can be determined from the SOTA summit page.
As for contest response formats, sometimes life’s too short, though I did spend a while following the CWOps Morse course I did investigating contests and making a note of just how weird and complicated a contest’s scoring could possibly be. The Fox Mike Hotel Portable Operations Challenge takes some beating in this regard…
All fine but not necessarily the right data. I have been asked for the shire reference number which I never know. I struggle with Park References, especially POTA ones. One Australian contest requires you to send your age. Apparently “None of your business whippersnapper” isn’t appropriate. It’s a bit tedious on CW too.
It amuses me that a legion of operators use computer controlled logging with report and number auto fill but go LEO over FT8 protocols.
Unless you are actively doing a POTA activation and planning to upload your log to POTA there is absolutely no point in bothering with the POTA reference as chasers won’t get credit unless you (the activator) upload your log. If they ask for a POTA reference then ‘SRI NOT POTA’ might be appropriate…
Funny story about contesting and SOTA…
A few months ago my buddy and I were on our way to a summit and while he was dialing around on the 10m mobile, he heard a contest and decided to try and make a contact. The exchange appeared to include a serial number, so when he got a response, he gave them “1” because this was his first contact. Recipient thanks him and moves on. Fast forward to after our activation and we’re heading home, he is again on 10m and tries to contact a contester. Goes to give the exchange and provides “2”. This time the recipient says “thanks, but you don’t sound like you’re 2 years old. What is your age?”. Turns out the exchange was your age and not a serial number! Suffice to say that made us laugh and we wondered what the first one thought of an obviously mature man saying he was “1 year old”.
I think that conclusion would be a bit harsh, Tom. I’m not particularly aware of any ‘anti contest’ sentiments notwithstanding the usual moaners (on every topic) in the Letters page of RadCom. But then, as I’ve said before on this reflector, I’ve lived a sheltered life - radio wise.
My first reaction was the same as Richard’s @G4TGJ , that the station might be a bit intimidated, not knowing which contest this is and what the expected exchange might be, or (in their ignorance) even think they must not return a number if they’re not in the contest. Their CW might not be up to decoding an unusual request sent at 25+wpm. I know a little better, so if the caller sends me “num?” (or similar), I’ll fake a number.
For someone not interested in nor knowledgeable about contests [that’s not to say ‘anti contest’] they (like me) probably wouldn’t try to find out there and then on the summit which contest it is even if they had phone reception and knew which websites to check. We each have our preferred ways of operating and for me, once I’ve done a self-spot (if I even can), I like to put the mobile phone away and focus on the radio [esp. necessary for CW mode] until it’s time to QSY to another band or head home or on to the next summit.
I rarely participate in contests but I don’t dislike them. IMO far better to have wall-to-wall contest stations on the [CW][SSB][etc] sub band than acres of nothingness.
I’ve always found that a weird feature of (most?) contests. Always sending a 5NN report is conveying redundant and often untrue information. Maybe, it’s a legacy of a time when contest reports were realistic. Why don’t the contest organizers agree to drop that from the exchange?
If I were the worldwide contest tzar, I would have contest rules changed to send some real (but also short) piece of information like the station’s 4-character maidenhead locator.
If you don’t contest you won’t know where realistic reports do get exchanged. The May 2m contest had real reports, grids and postcodes being exchanged.
Some contest already specify this and reports are not part of the exchange. CW Contests are an excellent way to build up your CW receiving and general operating skills.
If a contest rule was added to send “real” reports, I expect most HF contesters would continue sending 59(9) for everything. There would be no way of proving they weren’t genuine!
The exchange is the element that more verifies the “goodness” of the contact. Serial numbers are good and almost impossible to bluff (I recall someone getting caught out for “log padding” in the 80m CCs a few years ago). Other contests like CQWW have only CQZ as the exchange, which is trivial to fill-in if you didn’t copy it on air. At the other end of the spectrum you have the WAE which offers additional scoring for copying and exchanging QTC information.
The long standing “tradition” is that HF contests are all 59(9) reports, while VHF/UHF use “real” reports. But there’s absolutely nothing to stop an HF contester using real reports, or indeed a VHF contester sticking to 59 universally.
Coincidentally, I’ve just applied [about an hour ago] to rejoin the RSGB (after about a year’s absence) so I can look forward to moaning about the moaning letters in Radcom.
For some, maybe. I have so far always found the associated stress counter-productive at best.
In my very limited experience, the “5NN” serves as a very useful shorthand for “The bit of data you really need is about to be sent, so listen carefully!”…
