Latest updates for SOTAData3
A bunch of changes have just been pushed for SD3, details below. Mostly under the hood, there’s a bunch of changes pushed now to help us with the transition from SOTAMaps (eventually) and provide some more functionality
Locations for Activator QSOs
Firstly, we now track activator QSO chaser locations in the following order:
- If the QSO is a S2S, the chaser location is set to be the remote summit (logically)
- If the ADIF file specifies a Lat/Long, the chaser location is set to be this Lat/Long pair
- If the FLE or ADIF file specifies a Grid Reference, this is converted to a lat/long and used
- If the FLE or ADIF file specifies a POTA reference, this is converted using the POTA API to a lat/long
- If the FLE or ADIF file specifies a WWFF reference, this is converted to a lat/long
If you enter QSOs manually or via a CSV file, you can specify locations that are not S2S using the Add or Edit Activation screen, using the map icon at the end of the row:
This will pop up another box to enter a variety of options:
And finally on submit, will display a green map icon when there’s location data present.
Ultimately this will all feed into the QSO mapping features that come from SOTAMaps.
DXCC tracking and badges
Chasers within an activation now store DXCC so it is possible to do a DXCC set of badges for Activators similar to what is already there for Chasers.
The DXCC rules for SOTA activations are as follows (because I get to define them!):
- Any QSO counts, regardless of your home DXCC
- DXCC badges are awarded for 10, 25, 50, 100, 150 and 200 DXCC entities worked from SOTA activations.
- If you desperately think you’ve worked someone in Austria but you seem to be a DXCC entity short, check that QSO again, because you’ve probably entered it as “Zero-Echo”, not “Oscar-Echo”. There’s about 4000 logs that have no DXCC associated with them. Some of these are Balkan entities before that was sorted out, but the vast majority are typos.
5m and 8m bands added
It is now possible to add QSOs made in countries that have access to 8m and 5m. For SOTA award purposes, VHF is defined to start at 50MHz, so 5m will qualify for these awards, but 8m will not.
Silent fixes
The rest are not yet visible but will pave the way to further improvements.