It should now be right. I literally updated this thread at the same time as telling Sid and Adele. They had already been notifying Friendface but it took a bit longer to update
1017 UTC 22/9/15.
Looking at the DXcluster map at DXMaps - there are contacts between southern parts of Africa and Europe happening on 10 & 12m at the moment, but nothing on any lower bands. The contacts look to be with DXPedition type (QRO) stations, so I suspect your signal may not get this far (on any band) Andrew. Band conditions at this time of day remain terrible.
73 Ed (āWhereās that Weissbier - itās Oktoberfest timeā) DD5LP.
I had great success today, even if I only had 8 QSOs. s2S with Sid and Adele, a contact into Namibia with Peter V51PJ, and a few locals. Thatās association 13 and continent 5 for SOTA
Views were stunning and I had the summit to myself.
My dad and I joked that he is my bad luck charm, and so I left him at the cafeteria. Success, so it must be his fault.
Hi Andrew,
Good stuff - well done
I hope you took some pics.
Cheers
Mike
Going to do a snap Elsepiek activation this morning around 0900 utc. Will try higher bands this time for EU and G loving.
Cheers,
Andrew
Hi Andrew,
Glad you qualified the summit, sorry I was not part of it.
I hung around for an hour after the nominal activation time waiting for a spot. None seen, went to bed.
As I did not have a nominated starting frequency I could not do a listening watch.
Any hint as to where you might be on the band this time?
73
Ron
VK3AFW
28.500 and 24.944. Bunch of school kids on the summit, will set up when clear.
Gentleman,
I have just deleted 5-6 "sorry canāt hear you " type spots regarding this activation. Thatās not on.
THE SPOTTING SYSTEM EXISTS TO REPORT WHAT CAN BE HEARD
If you canāt hear someone you donāt spot it.
Agreed, we do need some other kind of back-channel to assist (not harass) the activator - perhaps direct SMS is the best (and private) option.
Ed.
Please explain why it is a problem as I donāt get it.
73
Ron
VK3AFW
Hi Andrew,
Well we gave it a good shake but propagation was very poor. I tried both short and long path on 10 and 20. 12 m arrangement has no F/B.
Only the ZL beacon on 14.100 copied but no other beacons heard on 20/15/10 m. I hope you qualified the summit.
Thanks for posting the details and foe getting out there.
73
Ron
VK3AFW
Spots are meant to tell people what is being heard. The MT has explained this requirement on many occasions.
Ron, so far this year 2,072 activators have uploaded logs into the database. Now, imagine that every one of them after looking at todayās spots decided that it was the thing to put an āI canāt hear youā on the spots page. Imagine, if you will, how that would overload the spotting system. Even ten āI canāt hear youāsā would crowd other active spots off the home page. We aināt being ruddy awkward, mate, we know what we are doing!
Brian
Think Iām with you Ron, especially when conditions are not good. At least the activator knows someone was listening and the band wasnāt open. By the way there have only been 20 spots shown in the past 8 hours, are conditions really that bad or have a lot of spots been removed.
Have to admit I do during the VK daytime (when the mods are asleep) sneak the odd Iām not hearing you spot in and then remove them a short time later.
Different story at peak times for Uk and US but Iām usually sleeping then.
Keep up the good job guys.
73 John VK6NU
While I must admit I found the spots useful, I was also monitoring the reflector. The main problem was when Sid spotted me on 20m and a spot followed a few minutes later for 12m saying ānil copyā
I got 5 contacts all up and an education from the school kids on modern mating rituals - poor kid was trying very hard, very politely, but was not successful in the time he was there. She seemed nice, I hope they get somewhere.
The forty other kids were noisy though!
Apologies for the spot spam.
Cheers,
Andrew
VK3ARR
Not as asleep as you might think, we are a bunch of night owls, or at least, some of us are! In fact I tend to ignore the odd one or two, especially if they seem to be carrying some additional useful information, but this morning with sparse activity and an unsettled geomagnetic field we seemed to get quite a flurry of them and we donāt want it to become a habit - Iād rather be chasing than zapping space-fillers!
Brian
Which is why spotting what you canāt hear is annoying to other people. Those using compressed views will see a 12m spot and unless they hover, they wont see the comment. Those using the SOTA cluster donāt get the comments. In both cases a āI canāt hear you on 12mā spot will be interpreted as āsomeone is hearing the activator on 12mā UNLESS these people do something extra.
Really? Thatās assuming they have coverage and are looking at the spots.
Multiple āI can hear himā spots are different, especially when there is significant geographic distance between the spotters. Such as VK4 and VK6 stations spotting a VK7 activation. That would suggest thereās propagation to a significant part of VK.
Now, for everyone who thinks they know better than the MT, Iām happy to admit maybe you are correct. Maybe you are not correct. But it doesnāt matter. You have been asked nicely not to place āI canāt hear himā spots.
Another annoying habit of some chasers is to post a message such as please try 20m when finished on 40m and they post it with 14.285 or whatever as the frequency, even though the activator is still on 40m. I understand itās not appreciated to use the spot system to communicate with the activator (if he is even following it) but also to put a frequency on a different band to where the station is currently operating can really cause confusion.
I agree, when I come across one I will nuke it!
Brian
Exactly.
And IMHO, the posting of requests to change bands is also a misuse of the Sotawatch Spotting system.
(Latest example, Wed Sept 23 at 20:02 UTC).
73,
Walt (G3NYY)