Any chance for a BOTA (Beaches On The Air) Template in the future?

Feature Requests New Template Request
#1

Is it possible to get a template for hams that activate beaches (BOTA), because we have more beaches than parks or summits around.

73’s

#2

I’ve not heard of BOTA - I’ll look at their website to see what fields they require, if they have spot information I can pull from/display etc.

#3

Thank you very much for taking a look, I hope it is possible for you, I really appreciate your attention to this topic.

And thank you for the quick response to my request.

73’s

#4

atta, have you ever submitted a log to BOTA? Do you know where the guidelines are posted, what fields they require, etc.?

Also curious how popular BOTA is in comparison to WWFF, which is a program very similar to POTA and would require very little change to the POTA template to implement.

#5

Hi
Thanks for your interest, the fields are very similar to those of SOTA/POTA.

All columns of a regular logbook plus two aditional columns:

1- Beach reference (a six digit number)

2- The BOTA CODE column it’s a four alphanumerical places code.

Leters on the bota code are never capital letters.

Here is a link to the guidelines

#6

Thank you.

So what do you post to the board then? Is there ever a need to send in / upload a log to the program, or do you manually type in the log (date, time, beach number, contact, band, and your 4-digit code)?

If the former (upload ADI file), then it will be important to know what content needs to appear in the ADIF. Typical award programs use “MY_ SIG” to log the program type, such as “BOTA,” and the beach number would go into the “MY_SIG_INFO” field. Your 4-digit code might fit well in Comments.

If the latter (typed in manually), then you might be able to use the Generic template as-is and enter beach info into the comments field.

My hunch is that a modification to the Generic template (add SIG & SIG_INFO to the QSO section and add MY_SIG & MY_SIG_INFO at the bottom of the panel with my info) would fit the need in either scenario without creating a dedicated BOTA template. There are other award programs too that use those same fields so making them visible in the Generic template could accommodate a wider range of needs.

@jarrett, regardless of whether or not you create a BOTA template, I think these mods in the Generic template would be very helpful.

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#7

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