Rules & Expectations

Please take a moment to familiarise yourself with the rules.

Rules

  1. SiOTA activators participate in the program entirely at their own risk. The SiOTA Committee and co-ordinators shall accept no responsibility for injury, loss of life, or any other loss.
  2. A silo is defined as a cylindrical storage vessel, with height greater than width, and an elevator to add contents from the top. (This is designed to include the large, usually concrete, silo towers that are common throughout the wheat belt, and were used by local farmers to consolidate their harvest for shipment to port, usually by rail)
  3. The program is open to Activators, Chasers and Short Wave Listeners (SWL).
  4. All Activators must hold an appropriate Australian licence and must abide by all licence conditions.
  5. Valid contacts will include an exchange between the activator and the chaser of their respective call signs, a signal report, and the SiOTA reference number.
  6. Contacts via Repeaters, IRLP, Remote stations, Echolink do not count for valid QSO’s.
  7. The activation zone is within 1km of the silo.
  8. It is the obligation of the Activator to check that they have permission to be at the activation point. (Many silos are on private land so you must ensure that you activate from public land, or have permission to be on private land)
  9. For an activation to qualify, there must be at least 3 contacts on any band, any mode, but at least one contact must be on an HF band (160m-10m).
  10. The minimum 3 QSO qualification can be accrued over multiple activations if necessary.
  11. A contact with the same call sign on a different band or on a different mode, counts as a separate QSO.
  12. You are scored over a calendar year, your score is the number of silos you activate during that calendar year multiplied by the average number of QSOs per silo for that calendar year.
  13. There is no requirement that QSO are confirmed.
  14. Activation modes can be mobile (/M), portable (/P or /$) or pedestrian mobile (/PM)
  15. Activators must submit a log in ADIF format. Silo activations are indicated by MY_SIG=SIOTA and MY_SIG_INFO=silo-code
  16. Chasers are not required to submit a log
  17. There are no points or awards for this program.
  18. Activators are encouraged to call ‘CQ SiOTA’ or ‘CQ SILO’.
  19. The program commenced (18-05-2021) and QSO before that date do not count.
  20. SiOTA participants are encouraged at all times to abide by the DX Code of Conduct. More information on the DX Code of Conduct can be found at: http://www.dx-code.org
  21. By design your logs for a given callsign are only accepted on or after the date you added your callsign to this site.

Expectations

  1. Please have some fun, enjoy visiting these structures and be sure to spend a bit in the regions as you go!