Three New Stamps

In the last radiogram I said I wanted to build an Elmer stamp and figure out how to reward a pileup. Both are done, along with a third which rewards hosts who simultaneously chasing other ops.

These are the first new stamps since scoring shipped four weeks ago. There are now seven stamps, each with a unique way to score points.

Stamp	Earned by	Earned when	Points
Elmer	Chaser	You work a host for one of their first 25 confirmed contacts	1
Pileup	Host	Five other stations called on your op in the last ten minutes	1
Two Hats	Chaser	You chase another op while hosting your own op	1

Remember that a QSO is scored once and the points are added to both operators’ totals.

Below is the short version of each one. The full rules now live in the handbook at stamps and combos, which is where to look when you want to know exactly how a stamp is decided. While you are there, check out the redrawn and improved artwork on the other stamps and combos. Some of the new pictures began life at the Noun Project and require attribution. A new about page credits those artists along with the other open source projects and libraries used in APRS OTA.

Elmer

Elmer is ham radio’s word for mentor. Operators hosting their first ops need patient and encouraging chasers to help them get a feel for how it all works. A chaser earns a point for working a host for one of that host’s first 25 confirmed contacts. The handbook has the details of how the first 25 contacts are counted.

The Elmer leaderboard is live on aprsota.org/leaderboards now. It ranks operators by how many Elmer contacts they made over the month, the year, and all time.

Pileup

Working through a pileup is one of the most demanding things a host can do, so each contact worked in one earns the host an additional point. A contact is in a pileup when five or more other stations have chased your op in the ten minutes before that contact.

Pileups are shown on the op page. The chase lane of blue dots below the red bar shows when each station called in, and a blue band marks the stretch where they piled up. Here is part of the timeline from ZS2OK’s recent op:

Pileups are defined by the time that the chaser initiated contact, not when the QSL happened. The handbook has the full explanation for how a pileup is decided and scored.

Two Hats

You can be both a host and a chaser at the same time. If you chase someone else’s op while hosting your own, that QSO earns the Two Hats stamp.

This one is here because the activity runs short of chasers far more often than it runs short of hosts, so it pays you for going out and working somebody else while your own op is running. It is judged at the moment you call, so your own op ending before you get the QSL costs you nothing. See what counts as wearing both hats.

These start now

The score for a QSO is final the moment the host confirms it, so these three new stamps only apply going forward. Contacts you completed before this weekend will not retroactively get them.

Coming next

Pileup and Two Hats do not have leaderboards yet. They are coming soon.

The three new stamps can be earned for the whole of September, so even if I don’t get the other leaderboards out for a week, they will reflect the stamps earned for the whole month.

I’ve also got a bunch of smaller improvements, particularly to the bot messaging workflow. For example:

• improved messaging when a host sends their HOST message on RF but their beacon is sent via APRS-IS
• better handling of the scenario where a chaser calls in with a minute or two of time left on the op

One more thing before you go. The first batch of achievements gets awarded at the end of August to everybody who finishes the month on a leaderboard, so there is not much time left to move at aprsota.org/leaderboards.

See ya in the ether!

• Email: jared@k0tfu.org
• Discord: APRS OTA