Summit references on air

Morning all

After 8 day duck am back woo wooo :slight_smile:

Now have heard a few Sota,s this morning but conditions not in me favor at moment .
I did hear IZ3GOS/p calling away on 14280 but when he working stations kept disappearing into the noise level and once the chasers eased off he became stronger and more audio able. but could not reach him.

But he did not call out the summit ref with his call. Hence i could not put up the information on the watch fully as had no ref to give. so had to use a ref i knew about to get it up on the watch. So to alert people he’s on that freq calling CQ, but summit info I had was not correct. In hope some one would hear him and know his info and correct me on the watch.

But thankfully he moved to 14285 and some one got him and posted up the info corrected of course and he was on 14280 prior to his move.

All am asking is could the sota operator during non contact bits of calling CQ include the Sota ref your working from. Then if i can hear you but can’t reach you, can alert others to your summit as many of us do.

Thankfully me duck is broken now after finally reaching him on 14285

Karl

Morning Karl, welcome back, hope you had a great holiday.

You make a good point - it is really helpful to have a spot placed by someone who hears your call from a summit. It isn’t always possible to manage a self spot, and it can be eerily quiet without one!

73
Adrian
G4AZS

1 Like

You are right Karl. I always give the reference when calling CQ even in case I did a self spot. Even a self spot may have a typo in it and sitting on a mountain top with patchy mobile access makes it difficult to correct this. So best way for chasers to verify the reference is the activator gives the reference on air.
I skip the reference in the QSO itself in the typical pileup situation unless it is summit to summit or the station is signing /p. But once I feel it’s necessary to call CQ I always add the reference.
When starting to call CQ without a spot to my mind it’s vital to add the SOTA-reference.

All referes to phone operation.

73 de Michael, DB7MM

When been out on summit on air like to punch in the Sota summit ref, gives nice long over, if not many people about and keeps people alert you active as in my case have i got the spot right in first place as did mess it up first couple times.

Been duck for ten days till today yesssssss good to be back a chasing again

Karl

If you don’t know the exact summit, but know the region, youcould try putting in XXXs - e.g. DL/AM-XXX it is then obvious that you don’t have the full information for your spot.

I know the alert page allows this, not sure about the spot page.

Ed.

Welcome back Karl. Missed you last week from Mull, not that the sky would have favoured many contacts perhaps :unamused:

I always incorporate the summit reference (and name if I have a clue how to pronounce it, which is not often in the case of most GM summits…) in my CQ calls. A habit formed in my early days on 60m when we were exhorted not to call CQ SOTA on the band to avoid giving the impression of exclusivity, I use a general CQ including the summit reference and ask for any call. Not sure whether that’s an advantage or a disadvantage these days…

73 de Paul G4MD