SOTA2APRS

SOTA summits nearby moving APRS stations sending the symbol around 2025-04-18 16:36 UTC

SOTA2APRS is an experimental service that posts the SOTA activations (spots and alerts) and some summit locations to APRS-IS. Web based clients showing the positions on maps include aprs-map.info, APRS.fi or agwtracker.

SOTA2APRS reports

1. every activator "spotted" on SOTAwatch to APRS-IS with his current frequency as (or on some clients).
   • example: ON6ZQ 007.032MHz SOTA activation ON/ON-001
   • SOTA spots that contain the words "test" or "ignore" in their comment are not reported to APRS-IS.
   Activators who would prefer NOT to be listed on APRS when their activations are spotted on SOTAwatch are welcome to let me know -> mailto:info [snail] on6zq [period] be, and I'll make sure their callsign is added to the black-list.
2. every announced activation ("alert") with the date and time of planned activation as (or on some clients)
   • example: ON/ON-001 SOTA activ. planned on YYYYMMDD HHMMz
3. In addition to spots and alerts, SOTA2APRS also monitors in real time the stations that use the symbol (/[), and determines if they are in the vicinity of a SOTA summit and moving.

Only if so, a symbol is sent at the location of their nearest summit.

• example: ON/ON-001 Summits On The Air - www.sota.org.uk

This means that

• any moving stations that use the symbol will be shown with the SOTA summits nearby.
• in particular, activators carrying an APRS tracker (or an APRS enabled transceiver, or a mobile phone running an application like APRSdroid) will be shown on the map with the location of the summit they are going to as .

SOTA2APRS is purely experimental, and is meant

1. to make the SOTA related activities known to a larger public
2. while helping
   • chasers to follow the activators progression
   • activators to be chased and assisted if necessary

It may be adapted or stopped without notice depending on the feed-back I receive.

Note on why "obsolete" APRS "objects" are still visible:

The APRS protocol defines a "kill object" option. A "kill object" is a special type of APRS message that indicates the original object should no longer be displayed.

It doesn't really delete the original object from the APRS network, but marks it as "killed" so that APRS clients SHOULD stop displaying it. This is not a complete removal: the original object still exists in the APRS network, but it is marked as killed.

SOTA2APRS DOES send a "kill" object after one hour for the objects related to SOTA activations.

However, most user interfaces (including well known web based services) do not handle this feature properly, and keep displaying "killed" objects.

Users can of course choose to use their client software option to only display the objects that are not older than a certain age (1 day for example).

The SARTrack client is a very advanced Amateur Radio APRS program, perfect to follow the SOTA activators progression.

Note: SOTA2APRS must not be confused with the gateway service APRS2SOTA provided by Stewart G0LGS, allowing users of the APRS network to post spots on the SOTAwatch system.