W4C NC-Eastern Mountains 3 Activations Sunday

I am planning to activate three summits on Sunday (May 7th). Times are ballpark.
10:30am EST
W4C/EM-004, Snake Mountain

1:00 pm EST
W4C/EM-008, Rich Mountain Bald

3:30pm EST
W4C/EM-005, Elk Knob

Feel free to txt me assuming I have service

Alan
KN4BBC
919-389-6608

Post an alert Alan.

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I did!

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And if I look in the right place I can see them as well!

Hi Alan

Good advice from Andy to ALERT in advance, though you have had two months of successful activations. How do you SPOT from the Summit? If you are not registered with SMS, I highly recommend it.

Some of us (Me) use it as our ONLY spotting method (except when a friend might do it for me). Some might only use it when cell service is very spotty. And it can be an emergency backup if the database is down.

The way you worded your post “assuming I have service”, and seeing you are fairly new made me wonder if you are aware of SMS, and able to take advantage of it if necessary. You would register with Andy, and he is certainly aware of you now.

Glenn

Hi Glenn,

Thanks for the reply… I’ve been adding alerts as well. In this case I posted here first and then posted the three alerts about 5-10 minutes later. For my first few activations I only used the spot / alerts as I didn’t know people put there stuff her on the reflector. Do you not see the ALERTS?

I’ve been using SOTA Goat for spotting or just the SOTA watch site on my phone. If I don’t have services I’ve just asked my first QSO to spot for me.

I signed up for SMS alerts with Andy but it doesn’t seem to work. I didn’t want to trouble Andy with trying to figure out why it doesn’t work… I’m pretty sure I have the syntax correct it just doeskin show up on sotawatch afterwords.

By assuming I have service I was referring to incoming text for folks requesting a particular band. I’ve found that if you leave your phone number some folks will txt you saying… “hey can your try 60m” etc.

Hope to work you on Sunday and thanks again for the reply.

Can’t fix it if I don’t know. You are not entering valid spots, you had the frequency and mode swapped.

$ W4C EM008 14.285 ssb calling cq now

ahhh ok. The site I got the syntax from has it wrong. This is the steps he has

SMS to: 530-430-7682
callsign-or-! association summit frequency mode comments
e.g. ! w4c WM-001 ssb 1300 UTC in the rain
! = use my sign-up call sign. If you want to use a different call sign, enter it instead of “!”
w4c = the part of the summit name before the slash
WM-001 = the part of the summit name after the slash (My sample summit is Clingman’s Dome, North Carolina, USA)
ssb = I’m using SSB, not FM or AM or CW.
1500 UTC in the rain = my comment, telling them when I was spotted (1 PM Eastern Daylight Time) and that it is raining.

http://k4kpk.com/sota-self-spot-via-sms-in-the-usa

Yes I can see the Alerts. I was under the impression they were not there when I wrote that. Andy has pointed out the reason that your SMS spots did not go through. But there are probably some other small SMS details you are not aware of. I will email you a copy of the most comprehensive SMS spotting manual on the planet. If you have any questions, just ask. Since I am the one that compiled it, I should be able to answer most questions.

Glenn

SOTA Goat is AWESOME for spotting… if you have service. Once you get the the summit you click on “summits nearby”, the first one on the list will be the one you are on…, you click spot, punch in the freq, mode and message and hit ok. You dont have to fuss with typing in the summit code.

Looks like the site I got my syntax for the SMS from was wrong.

Sure send the guide… anything helps!