During my HB0 tour yesterday I’ve been spotted by RBNGate with the following entry:
OE/DM1LE/P on HB0/LI-004
The first part of the spotting information is correct, i.e. at this time I called CQ as OE/DM1LE/P. The information given in the second part originates from my alerted summit information. Of course RBNGate is not able to retrieve the sent SOTA reference and tries to complete the spotting information with the well known reference given in the alert.
But in my eyes the combination of this two independent information doesn’t make sense. IMHO an activator cannot activate a SOTA summit from one country while staying in another country.
My expectation has been that, according to my alerted HB0 summits, RBNGate would ignore all my CQ calls with the prefix OE.
The FAQ of the RBNGate states:
The callsign in my Sotawatch alert is W1ABC but I may call CQ as W1ABC/P or W2/W1ABC/P. Will I still get spotted?
Yes. Portable designators are ignored by RBNGate when it checks for callsign matches between RBN spots and Sotawatch alerts, or between RBN spots and your self-spots. They are NOT ignored for the purpose of posting the spot itself: you will be spotted with whatever variant of your callsign that the RBN skimmer heard you send.
That means at least that ignoring the suffix is a feature, not a bug, of RBNGate. That’s in my opinion OK, as in many countries the suffix /P is optional.
In contrast the prefix, i.e. OE/, is a mandatory part of a callsign and shouldn’t be automatically ignored, otherwise unnecessary confusion will arise.
If the prefix is not being ignored, I could have alerted my OE summit and my HB0 summit for the same time frame and the correct spotting information could have been posted by the RBNGate.
If someone really wants RBNGate to ignore the prefix of his sent callsign, a wildcard like ?/ would be appropriate.
Please don’t get me wrong, I find RBNGate really very helpful. But maybe some small improvements could help to increase its acceptance.
Your very elaborate answer comes a little bit late after having yesterday activated only one reference out of 3 possible while standing on top of the Naafkopf. So I missed 20 additional SOTA points and 2 unique summits
But please stay on topic, this was not my question. My question was regarding the relation of RBNGate to the prefix of a callsign.
There are 2 types of border summits. One kind of summit is on the border and has multiple refs. LI-004 is like that. Rules 3.7.13 explain how they are activated. In your case you would have to physically move into each country to activate each ref. Obviously if you are in OE you cannot operate the HB0 summit because there is no AZ for HB0-LI004 in OE.
The other kind of summit is the summit which has an AZ that straddles the border but only has only 1 ref. I mentioned previously G/SB-004. The summit is about 200m from the G/GM border. The AZ is very large. It’s quite straight forward to locate yourself in GM and sign with a GM callsign whilst operating a G summit. I’m in the G summit AZ so I am activating G/SB-004 and I’m in GM so my call is a GM call. That’s what I did last April.
As for RBNgate, we’ve been here before, it is trying to make sense of limited info. It’s not always possible to figure out what is happening and it makes a number of guess based on alerts and what it hears from the skimmers and what it sees from the spots you and others make. I’m sure Eric could write lots of code to handle the special corner cases better. The question is whether it is worthwhile. At the end of the day it wont know what is actually happening so it is always going to be a best guess. My suggestion is when you can be on multiple summits is to place one alert for HB0/??? and extend the time windows (S+6 S-4) and place in the comment the refs you will activate and something like “listen for ref”. There will be people who don’t listen for the ref and log you on the spotted summit. There will be spots for old refs when you move on. Some people will listen and log you correctly.
Thank you for taking more time and explaining in detail some of the background.
The spotted reference was HB0/LI-004, Augstenberg, regarding to my alerted summit for the planned time frame. This is a summit with only one SOTA reference, i.e. it is no border summit. The summit that I’ve activated as OE/DM1LE/P at that time was OE/VB-241, Gorfion, a completely different summit, also with only one SOTA reference. My intention for proposing that RBNGate shall not ignore the prefix of a callsign, is that exactly such a mix-up of references could be avoided. If I’m unsure about the exact time frame for the activation of each of the summits, I could alert both summits with overlapping time frames and based on the actually sent prefix of the callsign RBNGate will alert the correct SOTA reference. You are right, that this only covers a cornerstone of all SOTA activities and Eric might justify my input as not being valuable for implementation into RBNGate.
That’s something that bothers me. You did it right in terms of the actual SOTA rules, and of course all other SOTA activators which activate multi-reference SOTA summits did as well. Absolutely no reasoning against your (or anyone else) doing.
But this goes completely against my understanding, IMHO a SOTA reference shall only be activated if your used callsign is according to the country of the activated SOTA summit-reference. All this explanations with the operating position of the activator or the position of the feedpoint of the antenna within one or the other activation zone or on the correct side of the border line does unnecessarily complicate the things. Maybe I’m just too simple minded to get it right, but I’ve decided for myself to only activate one reference of a summit at one visit of a summit. That’s a very stringent rule, but I can live with it to miss many points (like on Naafkopf HB0/LI-002, OE/VB-123 & HB/GR-338 where I’ve activated only the HB0 reference)
Completely d’accord. I just want to understand the tools I’m using in order to avoid unnecessary confusion.
Hi Stephan,
I think the programmer did not expect that someone would alert as going to a peak in a country other than his own and then come up in a third country as a portable, maybe on another peak and maybe not on a peak. If you are operating at a time close to your alerted time the RBNGate assumes you are at the alerted summit which is not unreasonable.
May I suggest that if you post an alert for a peak that you don’t go to then you delete that alert and post a new one. RBNGate should pick up the latest one.
Ah, I though LI-004 was the summit where 3 countries meet.
The problem is one of times, the FAQ for RBN spotter explains how the time windows are adjusted based on what the spotter sees happening. There’s no best time window.
Yes, I’ve seen that as a “best practice” of some activators, but I don’t want to rely on cellular network. Even in our densely populated Central Europe there are some blind spots, especially on top of a mountain, where you are not able to connect to a cellular network.
I’m glad that RBNGate exists. I guess without it there would have been quite a number of unsuccessful activations.
For future activations, I will stick to Andys suggestion to alert extended time windows in combination with wildcards for the references. Of course with the inconvenience for chasers, that they have to ask for the correct ref number.
Rules 3.7.13 cover the case where several references are given to the same summit by different associations.
I could not find a definition of the “activation zone” in the General Rules. The Belgian “Association Reference Manual” states “Operation must be within 25 m vertically of the summit”, which is the best description I could find of the activation zone.
However, if I understand you correctly, the activation zone for a given summit reference stops at the limit of the association that gave the reference.
If so, the summits having surroundings not lower than 25 meters extending to another association where no reference was assigned, must be operated from a position within the association that assigned the summit reference.
I might be splitting hair, but unless I misunderstood, this ought to be clarified in a future revision of the Rules.
Hi,
In the General Rules under Criteria for a Valid Expedition, 3.7.1.4 . The Operating Position must be within the permitted Vertical Distance of the Summit, as defined in Rule 3.5. The terrain between the operating position and the actual Summit must not fall below the permitted Vertical Distance. This is effectively the definition of the activation zone
The use of the description, Activation Zone appears in 3.7.1.9 but is not defined in the Definitions Section.
MM0FMF said:
Obviously if you are in OE you cannot operate the HB0 summit because there is no AZ for HB0-LI004 in OE.
Andys statement is correct, because Augstenberg HB0/LI-004 lies with its complete activation zone within Liechtenstein (HB0) and consequently cannot be activated from OE.
For my understanding there exists no rule that mentions that an activation zone ends at the borderline of an association.
The essential clause for claiming points for each association is:
the Activator may claim points each Association provided that the Operating Position is always within the jurisdiction of the appropriate Association.
That means, only the operating position is crucial for claiming the points, and of course the OP must always be within the corresponding activation zone.
What bothers me, is the mentioning of the “within the jurisdiction of the corresponding Association”, and that means for my very own interpretation that it is necessary to use the appropriate call prefix of the association. But that’s my very own, very stringent interpretation.
But this topic has not been created for discussing this question.
I think it would be better to open another topic for this discussion, or read all the discussions on the old reflector.
after having yesterday activated only one reference out of 3 possible while standing on top of the Naafkopf. So I missed 20 additional SOTA points and 2 unique summits 