On Friday night I am planning to camp out, overnight on a summit. I will be active in the evening and again in the morning. As this passes 00:00 UTC. Do I log it as a single activation or two? I know it won’t matter to my activator points, but it could for chasers.
Thanks
Martin
Well, chasing a summit on two different days will gain the chaser two lots of points, whether the activator logs it or not.
As activator, I would log it seperately for each day. You will only get the points once, but you will have added two activations to your total.
Enjoy the overnight, something I have yet to attempt!
73
Adrian
And make sure to have 4 qso in at least one of the two activations.
Enjoy the overnight stay
73 Joe
General guidance is to log it as one activation - you only climbed the summit once. This is very common in VK/JA/ZL areas
Andrew,
On NYD you get two activations for one ascent if you log enough contacts either side of roll over. Perfectly legit.
It’s easier in ZL/VK/JA etc.
Because during the rest of the year there was a problem with the recording of contacts with UTC rollover in between start and end, a number of us have been splitting the contacts into two activations. This was a suggested fix by a member of the MT.
One of course scores no activator points for one of the logs but it kept the logs in proper chronological order.
These days I rarely get to a peak before UTC rollover so the problem isn’t often there.
To split or not to split? It surely is up to the activator.
73
Ron
VK3AFW
Let me share a recent experience. I suppose it might be relevant. Yesterday I came back form an overnight activation of SP/BZ-041. I log on paper, so once at home I entered 35 QSOs into my logging program and exported to the SOTA CSV file. There were 22 contacts on July 30th and 13 on 31st, in chronological order. I uploaded the file to Sotadata, no problems with uploading. But there are two minor issues:
Show my chasers I can only see chasers from the first day of the activation.When I deleted the single log and uploaded two instead, split by date, the above issues are resolved, but as @VK3ARR observed, my total activation count was wrong (as was the activation count for the hill in question). After all, I climbed (and activated) Łopień once, not twice.
That’s why I went with single log in the end. The inconveniences thereof are minor, for me at least.
Perhaps the 2nd issue could be fixed in Sotadata, if on the single activation page contacts were ordered by date and time, not by time only.
Uh-oh - I know that sound.
That was the sound of a can of worms being opened.
i.e. this thread (and others)
Did you succeed Martin? I didn’t hear you or see any spots/alerts
I very regularly camp on top of summits and always record as two seperate activations. This including an overnight stay on Cross fell on New Years Eve/Day which got me 22 points.
I think it makes sense to record as two activations so that your activator log is consistent with chaser logs. Also, by putting activations on consecutive days it gives a bit of a signpost in your SOTA log for summits that you spent the night on.
With the weather I decided to play safe so just did GW/NW-041. Got a few spots of rain but all was good. The next few days look grim with high winds. However things look more settled after that. So watch this space!
Martin
There is no “can of worms” as far as i can see?? the rules are clear, 1 activation on 1 UTC day… if the time ticks accross the UTC day to the next, then happy days! Chasers that you re-work get double points… and for an extra bonus, do it on new years eve into new years day… activators AND chasers get double points then!
Alan
Take a read of the thread that I referenced. That will demonstrate how different people have taken different interpretations from the rules - and how in many parts of the world (i.e. those near the international date line) single activations spanning the UTC boundary are the norm, rather than the exception (due to the fact that arriving at a summit shortly before UTC midnight is probably the most common time to arrive).
My point being this ‘can of worms’ has been discussed, litigated and exhausted many times before. And the conclusion (from the MT) in the past has been that it is the activator’s call whether they can class a single summit visit crossing the UTC day as a single or two separate activations. The details (workarounds) of how the database can be made to understand that are also discussed - which explains the ‘odd’ behaviour noted by the earlier poster around QSO times & dates.
A quick summary:
I avoid an activation just before UTC roll over, I always wait until after unless I am sure I can score at least 4 QSO before roll over. When Hugh and I did 2 summit activation’s per day on our journeys through the out back sometimes we would try to get 1 person on air before roll over then the second person on after roll over. For us this is a morning problem as winter local time is 09:30 am a good time to arrive on a summit after a 2 or 3 hour expedition to make the summit from home or camp. We also split the modes of operation so Hugh will go first on SSB then I will go second on CW other wise no chaser points for the second person on the summit at the same time no one bothers to chase from my experience. I can always round up a score on 15m or 20m CW after Hugh has finished on 40m SSB. I had a post about this years ago and we made our way of doing it the norm for us and everyone is happy. When the system and rules where first invented it was in UK using UTC time who would have though folks would be on a summit at midnight normally. Part of the magic of SOTA world wide these days. So it was not a stupid question.
Regards Ian vk5cz . .
Is it one upload, one activation? Or does the software spot the UTC rollover and log it as two activations?
This suggests the second option.
This suggests the first option.
I’m confused…
This, because…
…this is special cased in the software as it’s the only time you really want two separate activations.
Ultimately, you can enter as one single activation (to ensure the points), or as two (to increase the activation count).
To those that say “but it’s only one activation”, let’s consider the following cases:
These are a mere selection of the whole range of cases. The question is - what actions are necessary to perform in order to claim that a consecutive activation is a distinct one? For every possible answer, there is a scenario that argues against it.
Ultimately, it’s down to the individual to decide.
It isn’t though.
This week, on Tuesday (tomorrow), I will activate The Cloud G/SP-015 from 1800 to 2130z. I will also activate it on Wednesday from 1900 to 2100z.
I will need to separate my CSV files into two uploads in order to prevent them appearing in the Database as a single 27 hour activation. This is fine - I’m used to doing this and it’s not exactly arduous to do so.
Why? They should have different dates.
73,
Rod
