Franzi, WE7CAT, was out yesterday in an area without cell coverage, and her ACR Bivy was not sending a message after 45 minutes of waiting on a cold, heavily treed summit (W7W/PL-052). She was going to use SOTAMAT along with her SOTACAT, as she had previously–and always with success. Unfortunately, I had deleted all the W7W regions from her SOTAMAT data to make room for her W7A trip, and then I forgot to add them back when she got home. Fortunately, I just happened to be driving over a hill with line of sight to her peak at same time she was making her second round of CQs on 146.52, and of course I always monitor 52 when driving for this type of occasion. She had tried calling CQ on other frequencies and had tried talking on a net, but no luck after 45 minutes. But heard her on 52, spotted her, and all was well. Obviously the solution is for me to keep her SOTAMAT updated in preparation for outings. But we came up with a back-up.
I added three messages that she can send me if this happens again: “I am on my peak, and it isn’t in my SOTAMAT, please spot me on 7.182….146.52…14.182. Hopefully I will be more diligent in my SOTA Goat support duties in the future, but at least now Franzi has one more backup.
Thanks for the QSO and congrats on another first activation Franzi.
In that situation I would have just spotted on the wrong summit and then asked the first chaser to post a corrected spot for me. I would have started on 20 since most of the big gun chasers would hear me just as well in W7W as they would in W7A. My guess is that @WB6POT or @W0MNA or @NT6E would have been there to help.
Good point, I was thinking about that after I made this post. But I also wondered if Franzi would hesitate to do that, not wanting to create confusion that she would then have to explain on the air. But now that you suggested it, she said it sound like a good idea, and she could try that as another option if she couldn’t reach me.
Thanks for chasing again!
I think Franzi might have first activation fever after we watched a documentary and read some books on Shackleton and his ship the Endurance in the Antarctic. Now she wants to name her little 1984 West Wight Potter trailer sailboat “Little Endurance”
Tell her not to hesitate. Spots with wrong refs get posted all the time. No big deal, just give the correct ref and ask one of the chasers who can hear you well to post a corrected spot. Much better than sitting on a freezing summit calling CQ into the wind!
Another solution is for her to learn code, then RBNHole can do all the work
She already knows SOS in CW. Needs to learn her own call plus EISH and TMO. That’s halfway home. The numbers are easy. Then a couple of punctuation marks. The harder letters can go onto a cheat sheet for use in the pack ice. I watched a career Army guy start that way. Just dove right in under fire. No fear or embarrassment or humiliation after two tours in Iraq and a couple of surgeries. Five words per minute, here we come.
