HB9SOTA Award Rules

1. General

The HB9SOTA awards were created to encourage and reward activations and QSOs on Swiss summits as well as between summits (S2S). The awards from the Swiss SOTA Group are available to all ham radio operators and SWLs.

The following awards are available:

  • Activator/Chaser Award
  • Lowland Summits Award
  • Summit-to-Summit (S2S) Award

2. Program start

Activator/Chaser Award01.01.2013
Lowland Summits Award01.01.2013
Summit-to-Summit (S2S) Award03.07.2016

3. Fundamental principles

The general rules of the SOTA UK program apply.

4. Award levels

The award certificates for Activators and Chasers/SWLs as well as Summit-to-Summit contacts fall into three categories:

  • Alpenrose (6 cantons)
  • Enzian (14 cantons)
  • Edelweiss (all cantons that have summits)

The Lowland Summits award certificate falls into three categories:

  • Alpenrose (50 summits)
  • Enzian (100 summits)
  • Edelweiss (all 1- and 2-point summits in Switzerland)

5. Activators

In order to qualify a canton, an activator must have activated two different summits in that canton.

6. Chasers / SWLs

In order to qualify a canton, QSOs with two different summits in that canton must have taken place.

7. Lowland Summits

For the Lowland Summits award certificate, only contacts with 1- or 2-point summits are counted.

Certificates are available in the two categories Activator and Chaser/SWL. A mix of activator and chaser QSOs is not possible to reach any of the three award levels.

8. Summit-to-Summit

In order to qualify a canton, you must make a summit-to-summit QSO whereby the station with which you make the S2S QSO is on a summit in the target canton. You do not get credit for the summit on which you are sitting, only the remote summit with which you make a QSO. Note that a summit-to-summit QSO where an activator outside Switzerland makes contact with a summit within Switzerland is also valid.

9. Special cantons

The canton of Schaffhausen has only one SOTA summit. It is sufficient to activate it once in order to qualify the canton.

The cantons of Geneva and Basel Stadt do not have any SOTA summits. Therefore a total of 24 activated cantons (25 if Basel Stadt was activated before that canton was canceled from the program) is sufficient to reach the highest award category (Edelweiss).

10. Applying for an award certificate

Participants can apply for award certificates directly on the Swiss SOTA Group website.

11. Award authorization

Award authorization is based on the logs in the SOTA database.

12. Award certificate distribution

Each award certificate is prepared as a PNG image file and is sent to the applicant via e-mail.

13. Costs

Award certificates are issued to members of the Swiss SOTA Group at no charge. Non-members pay an amount of CHF 10.00 to cover the cost of processing. Once an award has been applied for, this amount is to be transferred without any extra request by HB9SOTA via PayPal (pay@hb9sota.ch).

President, Swiss SOTA Group / Award Manager, Swiss SOTA Group

Jens Nolte, HB9EKO / Jean-Pierre Theiler, HB9HBV