Indeed. Our Founder and President defined it as a “benevolent dictatorship” right at the inception of the programme (before even my involvement).
To take your rather specious argument to its ultimate extreme, if every chaser was using the same Web SDR then this would mean the activator is being received by the same station over and over again. Would these “QSOs” all count as separate and different contacts for the activator?
73,
Walt (G3NYY)
Yes.
Why not? There have been many instances of chasers - and activators - sharing the same station. Are you saying that this is only acceptable when it suits you? (And you call my argument “specious”!)
Why don’t we specify a “Pure SOTA” week. We’ll turn off RBNHole, SOTAWatch, the database, the reflector, SOTA Mapping and see how the week goes? Any non-RF involvement will be specifically banned for that week. A week without the internet would do many of us good.
Most of the discussion on this has been about whether it is acceptable to use a remote receiver, accessed via the internet, for receiving. Some of the discussion has been about using remote stations for receiving and transmitting.
SDRs are a type of technology. Voting on that appears to be asking whether SDRs are acceptable technology. Eg KX3, IC7300, IC7610, K4 are SDRs so not allowed, but a remote IC706 would be ok?
A more meaningful set of questions would be around the use of remote stations:
Eg. (But not suggesting this is comprehensive)
- is it acceptable to use a remote receiver to receive signals when chasing SOTA contacts?
- is it acceptable to use a remote station for transmitting and receiving for chasing SOTA contacts
- is it acceptable to use a remote station for anything at all if you are an activator?
And how should your station be defined,
- is it just a different portable location that you would be using,
- is it different whether the remote station is shared by other operators (ie. group or club ownership) or it is owned by you and used solely by you?
- is it different if the remote station is your only station?
73 Andrew VK1DA/VK2UH
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What choice would I make? Chase on VHF rather than throwing the teddy out of the cot and giving up radio. Check my Chaser log, there are only half a dozen or so HF chases in there as I have a high noise level too. People seek instant gratification and just aren’t prepared to make the effort these days.
Why would I want to impose my choice on others? It’s called an opinion, everyone here is entitled to one. The difference is those you call ‘purists’ know what right and wrong.
My callsign should tell you that I started out on 70cms in the days before you could buy 70cms gear. It was four years before 2mtrs became available to me. I spent about forty years on V/UHF, mainly on SSB. The one thing that moving house several times taught me is that V/UHF has winners and losers. If you live on a hill you are a winner, if you live in a deep valley you are a loser. In other words, V/UHF is not a solution for everybody.
As previously mentioned, IOTA and DXCC already has well-established policy in place regarding these issues. As of yet, SOTA does not.
The essence of the DXCC policy is that the TX and RX must be located in the same DXCC - “activator” or “chaser”. But that location cannot change.
For IOTA chasing, this is the same, but additionally the TX and RX must be within 1km of each other, and not more than 100km from the operator. Again the location cannot change.
In SOTA, it has always been allowed to change locations but still add to the same chaser score. Some participants have contributed to their chaser scores from many different parts of the world. So limiting to a single remote TX/RX (or just remote RX) probably wouldn’t work on the back of this 17 year history!
Where I think we can adopt principle from DXCC and IOTA, and adapt to make a sensible context for SOTA is as follows:
Chasers:
TX and RX and operator must all be located within the same SOTA Association. Or it could be the same SOTA Region. This point could be usefully debated, but one or the other.
Activators:
TX and RX and operator must all be located within the same activation zone.
Of course 99.9% of all SOTA activity already takes place in accordance with what I describe, but if we are going to devise policy to deal with the remote TX/RX issue, then this is the kind of direction to go in I feel.
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Some Associations are very small, some are enormous! I would suggest amending that to TX and RX and operator should not be seperated by more than, say 150km.
Possibly a bit harsh on those who happen to live in a very small association/region.
It’s also worth noting that the boundaries of a region are not currently well-defined; we only know which summits lie within it. What region do I live in?
What about chasers who live where there is no association?
I think this suggestion as it stands is a non-starter, I’m afraid.
Martyn M1MAJ
XXX - No association yet exists. Then as long as the remote station is also not in an association as well then by definition, the station and user are in the same association. And yes, it is contrived this way. But it resolves the problem.
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There is no easy solution to this issue or we would have one by now. It’s most likely that when the rules change to include remotely accessed stations that we will probably use the DXCC or IOTA definitions. It would be far too easy to just use one of those sets of rules so no doubt we will need to tweak the SOTA version of whatever we use and discuss it endlessly.
At present there is nothing in the rules the stops anyone using a remote station of some kind. It’s not cheating but I acknowledge and accept that many active participants find something distasteful about the use of remote stations.
A point for everyone to consider is how you can police the rules on using remote stations whatever those rules may end up being. I know that SOTA awards are based on trust and we have had an infinitesimally small number of suspicious activations and chases compared with how many QSOs we have in the database. So maybe we will still be able to rely almost solely on trust should we introduce specific rules regarding remote stations.
Please note that I see a vast difference between someone who has a personal remote controlled station with co-located RX and TX and a general purpose public access remote receiver and whatever rules we introduce will also need to accommodate the differences between those type of remote systems.
Opinions are strongly held either side of this question (and of course, as with all complicated issues, it’s not really a question with just two sides). I hope everybody can respect the breadth of opinions and that all can eventually accept any additional rules (or absence thereof) and continue to enjoy their participation in this great programme.
Remember that SOTA aims to put ops on hills with radios, talking to other ops over the air.
“More ops” is a good aim. “More radios” is a good aim. The activators need the chasers, and if the chasers evaporate away because of the rise in noise sources that would obviously be very harmful to SOTA and the hobby more widely.
WebSDR is an interesting facet to the hobby. It’s a valuable resource. I often listen and post spots for activators this way. “More WebSDR” I think is also a good outcome. But I don’t use it as a part of logged chasing.
Remote TRX is another great development and I think it should be encouraged in the hobby as a whole. But within SOTA there is with both RX and TRX a question mark - how similar to using a repeater or QSPing via another station is this?
Consider this for anything Internet-linked…
Let’s imagine you unplug both ends from the Internet and substitute an all-amateur radio-linked network. Your signal would pass through nodes operating under call-signs other than your own. It is clearly difficult to argue this does not go again the convention of not QSPing or the “no repeaters” rule.
So, if that all-amateur system is “not Ok” how can it be any more “Ok” to take out the amateur gear and use the public Internet instead?
This is actually a switch of opinion for me.
The other distinction I’ve drawn previously is between public-access gear and your own. And this goes to the desire to encourage “more radios”. I don’t know where finally the line will be drawn (if at all) but as I see it, if we can encourage people to use their own remote (if it must be remote) RX (or TRX) or perhaps club-developed systems, that’s more desirable than just streaming back from a fully-public WebSDR. Some sort of personal connection to the kit being used I think makes it a lot less like a freely-accessed repeater-like resource.
What I cannot see is why a private system is desirable and a public system isn’t. In any case, a private system, whether it be a remote receiver or a remote station, is not a solution that is within the means of everybody given the price of property today. The last thing I want to see is a solution that is available only to the wealthy or fortunate, the ability to choose a public system is a better answer.
It is obvious that the transmission you send must come from “your” station. I think it is closer to the conventional sense of “your receiver” if any remote RX used has some sort of connection to you personally.
There is plenty of scope in this hobby for spending lots of money! But that is why I mention “club-developed systems”.
We could of course just leave things as they are.
Then we trust in the observance of “The Spirit of the Programme” and extensive “peer review”.
Ultimately, a tiny number of mavericks/fugitives* (depending on personal interpretation) will “extract the Michael” - but it will be tiny. The vast majority will have a conscience to do things right, and an even greater concern not to be thought dimly of by other participants.
So it will probably sort itself out without any action / policy from MT.
Put it this way, the “gaining an unfair advantage by inappropriate use of remote SDR technology” issue is probably tiny compared to the “operating from a car” or “pretending to be on a summit when you’re not” issues. Both of which themselves are tiny, but in all reality, probably do exist somewhere in the current vast scale of the SOTA programme.
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I agree that this is a grey area, and there is a range of opinion. I’m inclined to consider the level of skill involved, rather than the technology.
Using a repeater, in the common useage of the term, involves switching on a radio, listening on one channel, and then pressing the transmit button when a station calls through. It provides a fixed pool of operators and involves little skill or effort.
Using a remote receiver, whether public or private, is no easier than using the same receiver located in front of you. It can’t hand you contacts on a plate, as a repeater can.
I’d err on the side of making SOTA as attractive and accessible as possible, only imposing new restrictions if necessary to preserve this:
(I have nothing against repeaters, they are interesting in their own way and provide a useful service, just not for SOTA contacts!)
Not that obvious, Simon - I have experienced many cases of people sharing a rig both on summits and in the shack. There are even remote stations available for hire.
The troubling thing to me is that if things go on like they are now, there will come a time when very few of us will not have noise levels too high to permit traditional ham radio. At present only a relatively few of us are faced with the dilemma of how to procede in the face of overwhelming noise but that few is ever increasing.
Not at all. By definition when you transmit it is “your” station (hence the quote marks) that is transmitting. It’s a transmitting station under your personal authorization, whether yours by legal ownership, yours by virtue of rental (where allowed), yours by virtue of it being your club station, or simply somebody passed you their hand-held (but they won’t be happy if you say “this is mine now, I’m keeping it”!).
I fully sympathize with the noise predicament. We typically experience S7 noise at home. If we could suddenly make the noise go away I think it would be a lot easier to arrive at a stricter rule here.
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