Without points, hardly anyone would be standing on a summit at five in the morning. The activation programmes are one of the best things that have happened to amateur radio in the last twenty years. And still, almost everyone knows that one moment: right now you are not a person at the other end, you are a data field. About what lies in between, and what is left when nobody is counting.
First the praise, and it is meant seriously
It is only right to start with the obvious: the programmes work. Better than anything any club has ever dreamed up in the way of membership recruitment.
SOTA has taken radio amateurs up mountains who did not even know they enjoyed hiking. POTA and WWFF have moved the local club into the national park. The xOTA programmes are by now so numerous that it takes a dedicated map to keep track of them. Anyone standing in the fog at six on a Sunday morning with fifteen kilos on their back is not doing it out of pure contemplation. They are also doing it because there is a score. Because somebody is counting.
And that is a good thing. Points are not a flaw. Points are the reason somebody gets up. They are the occasion that turns a vague "one of these days I really should" into a date in the calendar. Anyone who builds an accusation out of that motivation has simply not understood how people work.
The same goes for contests. One weekend of contesting gives a beginner more operating practice than three months of listening. Anyone who has never entered one should.
So this text is expressly not about the fact that somebody collects points. It is about something smaller and more concrete.
The moment it tips over
There is a point at which a QSO changes. You notice it immediately, and it is surprisingly hard to describe. Let us try anyway, not in terms of motives, but in terms of what actually happens:
- You call, you get a callsign and a report, you give a callsign and a report back, and before the last word is out the other station is already calling the next one. No "thanks", no "73". You were an entry.
- You ask from the summit what the weather is like over there. Answer: "Noted, 73." Apparently the question was not part of the protocol.
- A chaser gets annoyed because his callsign still has not made it through on the third attempt. Not concerned about whether you can hear him, but irritated that the line is missing from his log.
- A summit-to-summit gets processed like a parcel handover. Two people are standing on two mountains at the same time, at a cost of several hours of ascent each, and exchange nothing but numbers.
- Somebody asks for the reference number before they ask for the callsign.
None of this is forbidden. None of it is impolite in any formal sense. And yet the same aftertaste is left every time: to the other person you were not somebody, you were a field in a form.
The bitter part is that the effort on both sides is enormous. Two people invest hours, vertical metres, weather risk and good equipment, and then treat the thirty seconds all of it was for as a formality to be got through.
An honest objection, and it is in the rules
Before anyone who is opposed to counting on principle feels vindicated: brevity is not the same as coldness. And a chaser who wants an extended chat has the rules against him, not for him.
The SOTA General Rules are unusually clear on this point. Chasers, it says there, must operate with care to help the activator, who may well be operating in difficult conditions. And then, verbatim: "Making over-long overs, giving a full breakdown of your station and asking unnecessary questions delays the Activator and infuriates other Chasers."
That is not an aside. Anyone lecturing on their antenna construction on a busy frequency is not the better operator. They are the inconsiderate one, towards everyone else who is waiting, and towards the person standing at five degrees and wind on a summit with a very real time budget. Anyone working an activation cleanly and briskly so that as many as possible get into the log is doing exactly the right thing.
So the difference does not lie in the length. It lies in whether a door is left open afterwards, and who opens it. Whether a half-sentence follows the report when the frequency allows it. Whether the activator, once the pile-up subsides, asks again: "Any more callers? Otherwise I would have time." Whether anyone notices that the operator over there is activating for the first time and currently has weak knees.
Two seconds of attention at the right moment, not two minutes of airtime at the wrong one. That is what this is about.
What the SOTA rules actually say
At this point it is worth reading what the programme rules actually contain. The result is clearer than you might expect.
Rule 3.1 of the SOTA General Rules describes the purpose of the programme: to encourage amateur radio activity from summits and to provide an award system. An awards programme, in other words. Incidentally, the word "contest" appears in the entire rulebook exactly once, in a subordinate clause about contest callsigns. SOTA nowhere describes itself as a competition.
Rule 3.7.2 on scoring is even clearer. Points are claimed per expedition, explicitly "regardless of the total number of QSOs made" once the qualifying minimum is reached. And per summit only once in any calendar year.
That is remarkable once you think about it for a moment: whoever processes contacts faster does not get a single point more for it. The haste this text is about is not even rewarded by the scoring. The points document that you were up there. Not how many you caught.
And then it gets genuinely interesting. Rule 3.7.1, paragraph 14:
"All SOTA operations are expected to be conducted in the spirit of the programme. Where it is determined that an Activation has not been conducted in the spirit of the Programme, the points for the Activation will be forfeited and other sanctions may be applied."
SOTA General Rules S0.1, issue 1.21
The spirit of the programme is not a matter of mood and not a politeness recommendation. It is a rule, with loss of points as the sanction. And in rule 3.7.3, the Code of Conduct, there is the sentence you could have framed: "The Golden Rule is that all participants are required to operate in a manner that is in keeping with the spirit of the Programme."
That turns the whole discussion around. Anyone processing contacts as though a championship depended on it is not invoking the rules. They are breaking them. The programmes are sound. What occasionally creeps in is an attitude from elsewhere: contest logic, imported to a place where it was never intended.
And that is why the right question is not "who is a points collector here", but one you can ask yourself: When did I last have a QSO that does not appear in any scoring?
Anyone who cannot find an answer should not think worse of themselves. They should simply have one next weekend.
What this does to the newcomers
There is one group for whom this difference is not a matter of taste but a switch on the tracks: the new ones.
Anyone who climbs a mountain freshly licensed with a handheld and a mediocre antenna and calls for the first time up there has an expectation in mind. That expectation is decided in roughly thirty seconds. If "thanks for calling, good to work you, best of luck up there" comes back, a radio amateur has been created. If "59, 73" comes back followed immediately by a call to the next station, then there is somebody wondering what they actually took the exam for.
It applies outdoors just as it does on the repeater: whoever gets no answer stops calling eventually. And whoever only gets numbers back stops roughly as quickly, only more slowly and more quietly, so that nobody notices.
What is left when nobody is counting
A thought experiment: suppose all the databases fail tomorrow. No references, no logs, no rankings, no points. Just a mountain, a radio, a frequency and somebody out there listening.
What would you still do then?
Probably still walk up. Probably still call. And the answer that came back would be the most interesting one of the whole year, because it earns nobody anything except the two people involved.
Those are exactly the QSOs you remember. Not the four hundred entries in the log, but the one where somebody asked whether the path up top is still free of snow. The OM who patiently explained why the antenna would not tune, even though he would rather have been working DX himself. The beginner you told that his signal was getting through remarkably well for a handheld, and who is going back up next week because of it.
Points expire. Rankings get reset. What remains are people who remember you.
Ten seconds
This needs no new rule, no admonition and certainly no wagging finger. Everyone should pursue the hobby in whatever way brings them joy, doggedly too, with a spreadsheet too, with annual targets too. That is entirely fine.
The request is smaller. One more sentence, when the frequency allows it. A question that is not provided for in the log form. A "thanks, that was my first summit-to-summit" answered with more than a number.
It costs ten seconds. And it is, fairly reliably, the only thing the other person will still remember in five years.
Together instead of against each other, even when together does not appear in the scoring.
73 de OE8YML
Sources
All rule quotations are taken from the current SOTA programme rulebook:
- Summits on the Air — General Rules, document reference S0.1, issue 1.21 of 01 June 2022, authorised by the SOTA Management Team. Specifically: rule 3.1 (Purpose), rule 3.7.1 paragraph 14 (Criteria for a valid Expedition), rule 3.7.2 (Scoring) and rule 3.7.3 (Code of Conduct).
- The Association Reference Manuals apply in addition for each country, for Austria the ARM of the OE Association. Point bands, seasonal bonus and summit lists are found there, not in the General Rules.
Transparency Notice
I used AI (Claude, Anthropic) as a writing aid for this article. The content, the selection and the stance are mine, as is editorial responsibility. The cover image was created with AI. The situations described are generalised observations from on-air operating and refer to no particular programme, no particular club and no particular person. Comments, disagreement and your own experiences are welcome at [email protected]. On the subject of operating culture in particular, disagreement is the most interesting thing that can reach me.
