Shack Sloth

On January 14, 2013, I became a SOTA Sloth.

SOTA is an award scheme conceived in the UK that promotes Amateur Radio activity by hikers who reach qualifying summits.

As in all human endeavors, we keep score.   :-)

Points are awarded to the hikers (the activators) based on the difficulty of reaching the summit and also to those who contact them (the chasers).  The lowest level of recognition for chasers is at 1000 points - Shack Sloth.

I became interested in SOTA after finding LA1ENA on the air from California signing W6/LA1ENA.  He noted that his was a SOTA operation on  W6/CC-075, and I looked it up - along with SOTA.  It sounded like fun - and it has been.

It's taken 13 months to reach the 1000 confirmed point level given my operating habits.  I operate exclusively QRP (5 Watts or less) and only using CW (Morse code).  CW, my mode of choice,  is actually an advantage for weak signal work.  I cannot remember more than a very few times when I could hear a SOTA activator but could not get their attention.  

My family responsibilities take me away from the shack daily around local noon, so I miss lots of activators.  I credit the K3 with most of my success, along with a nice location.  Here's what 1000 points worth of contacts look like plotted against time of day.  You can probably tell that I am retired:

Note the dip around 1800Z - noon-ish here in Texas.  I suspect there are two explanations:  First, I am usually away around noon - and second, lots of activators try for two summits, one early and one late.  Sometimes I could catch one or the other - and occasionally both.

The SOTA database says I qualified as Shack Sloth on 31 December 2012 but lots of the contacts counted toward the award were "unconfirmed".  I elected not to consider myself at the award level until I had 1000 confirmed points, so I looked into why some were not.

After I corrected several of my typos, about half of the problems were with activators who either had not submitted logs or had deleted their logs.  Most of the remainder were activators who did not hear my call correctly.  Another very active chaser and activator, Mike - KE5AKL, has a very similar call to mine, WB5BKL.  In a lot of cases, I suspect they heard **5*KL and translated that as his call.  I bet Mike has seen the opposite problem.

  

I was most disappointed with the activator who withdrew his logs.  Oh well.

Here are the 6 top activators in my log ranked by number of QSOs:

Activator	QSOs
WO6M	36
KE5AKL	16
WA2USA	15
N1EU	10
WS0TA	10
KD7WPJ	9

The SOTA QSO that put me over the 1000 point level was with Dan, WO6M.  73 Dan.

Many thanks to ALL activators who made the effort, especially the above, along with the 39 others in my log who made this a fascinating quest.

Also my thanks to the thoughtful originators of SOTA, who cleverly made it fun for both the activators and the chasers.

Nick - WB5BKL