Was I a chaser back then?

Dear all:
I got my call sign in November 2019, and I have been doing SOTA only for three months. While browsing my log, I recently found that one of the contacts I had logged last year was with a station doing SOTA and I was wondering, perhaps some other of my contacts are with SOTA stations but I was not aware of that. Is there any way to search the logs of all activations for my call sign? I’d like to (a) give SOTA activators confirmation of those QSOs and (b) log some chaser QSOs.
Thanks a million!
Mikel EA5IYL

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That would be a great feature overall.
Could be a nice “Welcome package” for new chaser signing up. And also a way to motivate people to join in.

When you first time setup your sotadata account to get a summary of all logged QSO. With the question: Would you like to add them to your chaser log? Y/N

73 Joe

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That’s a terrific idea, Joe!

Nope, because I know what’d be involved in getting that to work :slight_smile:

Andrew: That’s what I was expecting…
Sounds like a resource hungry database operation.
But no harm in asking :slight_smile:

I understand that a feature along these lines was originally in the thinking of the founders of the scheme as it was being set up. I think the idea was more of an automated email that went out to people saying “Do you realise you have 50 chaser points?” kind of thing.

I think WWFF have (had?) a “Logsearch” facility with similar principles. I agree something like this would be highly desirable - but knowing what magic our database gurus have achieved, if they say “no can do”, then it’s not going to happen!

At least not in the short term anyway. Technology and innovation progresses in an exponential manner, and I should imagine there will be an efficient and viable way of introducing this feature in the future.

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Sounds (from other comments above) like it’s the kind of query that gives the database a hard time. Over this side of the Atlantic you might get somewhere by searching your own log for /P callsigns and then checking them against a list of SOTA activators? (One such list, though I think it also includes many chasers, is mentioned in Morse Runner: practice CW pileups with SOTA participants callsigns .) Having identified possible activations you could then go to the SOTA database and hunt, but it wouldn’t be he simplest and quickest of processes, and if your log book’s long…

Thanks a million , folks! I understand!
Alternatively, is there a way to download (a periodically generated snapshot of) the whole 5M QSO database in some format such as CSV? Then I could process it locally…
Cheers
Mikel EA5IYL

No.

EDIT. Let’s complete that post now…

I feel like paraphrasing the Epilogue to Alice’s Restaurant here but the words are not inclusive any more.

If one person did it then it would be OK, not a big load on the bandwidth available.
If two people did it then it would be OK, still not a big load.

But once available, people will feel the need to be downloading the complete logs several times a day so they could check if someone had logged their call and then we’d be unable to do normal things. I’ve seen this happen so many times, a feature that would be nice and occasionally useful becomes abused through ignorance not malice.

You can still check your own log and find the relevant /p stations there.
Then you can check the database to see if they were SOTA activators.
If you are logged in, you can look at their log and see if you find your call to enter the qso as a chaser…
“ctrl + f” might help

73 Armin

Thanks for the edit.
The key word was “periodically”. Sotadata would periodically (perhaps each month, during the night) produce a snapshot and upload it to somewhere else, from where people could retrieve “historical” information. We’re talking about something like 5,000,000 QSOs, perhaps 200 bytes long each in CSV format; about 1 GB. Uploading this to (say) a Google Drive or some cheap storage would be feasible; perhaps one could update a GItHub file: the burden would then be theirs Does that sound more reasonable?
Cheers
Mikel

Thanks Armin. I was planning to do that, but I have hundreds of candidates.

ActivationDate TimeOfDay OwnCallsign OtherCallsign band mode
2020-03-01 00:00:00.000 09:34 EA5ITW/P EA5IYL 7MHz SSB
2021-01-02 00:00:00.000 07:28 YU1CA/P EA5IYL 14MHz CW
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All things have a price.

The bellringing database I use is free untill you want a special download. But you don’t have to be shy about asking how much it is, every time you use it there is the price for a special download. The price is set to be relistic but not to fleece you. I guess to stem demand but not to put you off if you really want it.

Just a thought

73 de

Andrew (G4VFL)

Thanks a million!