Quick question just as the topic says really.
The “Show who chased me” button, does it display SWL chases?
I noticed after my activation of Billinge Hill that there was a spurious chaser claimed qso. It occurred to me that it might be a SWL chase. Also occurred that I myself might be getting a bad reputation for non-qsos when in fact they are SWL chases.
Ian
No, it shows logs that are logged as Chaser QSOs only
Thankyou.
Ian
Most activators get this from time to time.
Often I can tell by their timestamp on ‘Show Who Chased Me’ that it’s after I’m no longer QRV on that band. As a natural born cynic I assume the chaser was desperate to ‘get the summit’ and falsified a log entry. When the timestamp is during a pile-up it might be that the chaser thought I was replying to him. However - again with my cynic’s hat on - if I didn’t send his callsign, he definitely didn’t hear it, so he shouldn’t assume I was calling him.
Well I certainly didn’t hear them , and I’m not sure the propagation at that time would have allowed them to hear me either. Personally, I’d like to give the claimee the benefit of the doubt of a genuine error, but considering experience of said operator it is unlikely.
I know it is said “that they are only cheating themselves”, but for those of us that, for whatever reason, can’t activate/chase as much as some of the more committed operators, it kind of rankles that they get congratulated on something that was never achieved whilst the more casual just plod along.
My rant over 
a whole 4 SWL points collected this morning whilst trying to get to grips with some react-native code for an assignment. Now that’s an achievement
Ian
100% agree.
There is one possible cause… chasers logging using SOTAwatch log button. If SOTAwatch is busy (when isn’t it now?) the chaser will be about to click the log button for the spot listed below you on SOTAwatch but the screen updates and they then click and now their mouse is above your line. So they log the wrong call. I’ve had a few chasers who worked the person before me in the spots but logged me due to a screen update they missed.
We have the whole spectrum of participants in SOTA from those who just get a kick out of doing it and that’s enough for them through to the highly competitive who are strongly motivated to maximize their points, uniques, completes, etc. For the latter, the vast majority get there through skill, effort and patience but sadly a few are prepared to cheat (although they probably don’t see it as such) rather than miss getting something that eludes them .
If I chase from home (rather than a summit) I use the Log Spot button. The dialogue is up while I try to work the activator. Once the QSO is complete I update the time and click the Submit button. If I never get to make the QSO then I dismiss the dialogue, but it’s very easy to automatically click Submit by mistake and log a non-existent QSO. I think I did that once but immediately realised and deleted the chase.
Often during an activation I can hear someone else sending a report and when I get home and log my QSOs I see a phantom call in the log.
Of course, but when an activator is weak it’s easy to think you can hear your call coming back. I think it’s mostly optimistic thinking in the desire to log the call and move on to the next activator. In contests and DXCC both ends need to agree on the QSO but SOTA relies on trust. There are bound to be a number of innocent mistakes in the database (along with some cheating).
Hi Richard,
This relates directly to the issue of ‘blind’ QSOs I discussed with you on another thread.
In my opinion, if I’m not sure that another operator is sending my callsign (especially in a pile-up), I don’t assume he is in QSO with me. I would rather try calling him again until I’m sure there is no doubt. I don’t think our competitive natures should trump good practise.
I do actually agree with you on this. Not all operators are good operators.
Hello Andy. Yes that happens very often to me. it’s getting so that I have to try and remember to check every one that I log. 73 de Paul M0CQE.
When you click the SOTAwatch icon to log, a box showing who you are logging appears.
e.g.
All anyone needs to do is read what is on the screen in front of them before clicking submit!
There’s another route that I personally have to be wary of: I use a wireless mouse, it keeps switching itself off to conserve the battery, I have to click it a couple of times to re-activate it and if I am in a hurry I might be careless about where the mouse is pointed when I click. This happened once, the log chase box came up and there is no delete button so I had to scrub it by hand.
Yours will no doubt be special and needs the buttons pressing but all the ones I have used normally just need moving them back and forth a bit AND THEN YOU WAIT whilst everything re-connects. Or you could roll the scroll wheel, that wont action anything.
Or click the big X to close the window without anything happening, just like everything else on Windows.
Re the not actually worked in a pileup mistakes, or the QSO wasn’t with the actual activator mistakes:
A read up on the psychology of hunter target-identification mistakes may shed some light. When hunters accidentally shoot their mates mistaking them for a deer, the easy, lazy assumption is that they were idiots with buck fever, taking a rushed shot at movement, colour, or on a partially sighted animal.
However, many times the resulting investigation shows that this is not the case. The hunter is often older, experienced, taking their time. They have waited till they are sure they have seen the entire outline of the animal. They check for correct colour, correct movement. They ask themselves, as we’re taught, ‘could this be a human?’. And throughout all their brain answers ‘deer, deer, deer’. And then they shoot their mate.
Hundreds of thousands of years of evolution as hunter-gatherers has tuned our brains to err towards false-positives when making prey identification, rather than miss out on a meal. For all those millenia, as a hunter-gatherer there was little or no cost in sometimes mistakenly thinking something else was the prey you were seeking, but a big cost in missing out.
Our brains remain wired in the same way, despite all our very recent advances. We should obviously train ourselves as chasers, just as hunters to take the steps to avoid these mistakes. But to do this we must remember that even slow, measured, careful hunters have made mistakes.
This seems like a logical and probable explanation for what has happened.
I must remember not to wear my deer outfit when outdoors Good thing the only trigger we have is the PTT, although 100W of RF does sting a little
Ian