Summits On The Air
SOTA
Summits On The Air
'SOTA is an award scheme for radio amateurs that encourages portable operation in mountainous areas' and has been carefully designed to make participation possible for all Radio Amateurs and Shortwave Listeners - this is not just for mountaineers!
The Summits on the Air amateur radio award programme was the idea of John Linford, G3WGV and along with the assistance of others, it transformed into the current sceme. The scheme is normally broken down into two parts:
Activators are radio operators who climb to SOTA summits and operate from there. Chasers are the other end of the QSO who can be anywhere. There is also a chance that two Activators contact each other and they have a Summit to Summit QSO.
More information can be found here.
Each recognised summit has a value depending on its accesibility. To activate a summit, the Activator must make four confirmed QSOs, although it is good etiquette to remain for some time to allow chasers to be able to contact you. Both the Activator and Chaser log the QSO gaining the number of points the summit is valued at. There are also additional points to be had in certain conditions. The logs can be submitted to the SOTA organisers and awards can be claimed.
Lots of software and Apps are available to help with SOTA matters, from logging, finding SOTA summits, being notified of Spots (operators currently activating a summit), alerts (details of future activations) and much more.
