Polo doesn't spot me for SOTA any longer (logged out at SOTA)

Hi all

I have something funny here regarding spotting.

I was out on a summit yesterday and did a combo 1 SOTA + 1 POTA. I had entered both the SOTA summit and the POTA park for that Operation as usual.

I noted soon after spotting in Polo that the SOTA audience was missing. And yes, despite having both activities in the operation correctly, there was no spot visible on the SOTA facilities. Only a spot on POTA.

I noted on the Polo screen then that only the fir icon for POTA was visible on the screen, the mountain icon for SOTA was missing. I verified the operation, but the SOTA reference was entered correctly as usual.

I spotted then the SOTA part manually/separately on Sotlas (like before Polo), and well - the usual SOTA partners called in very soon.


This morning I ran a test at home with another SOTA/POTA combo, a 3-fer POTA on a SOTA summit. Again today the SOTA symbol was missing and only 1 POTA symbol was visible. I remember from earlier that as many POTA symbols had shown as POTA references had been entered for the Operation. I would have expected now 3 POTA symbols and 1 SOTA symbol shown in the spotting section, but there was only 1 POTA symbol visible. See snippet below.

Test spottings from Polo showed that only the POTA 3-fer part had been spotted correctly in the usual way and that the SOTA spot was missing also today. So this spotting problem is not a one-off here.

A second test this morning was an Operation for 1 SOTA summit only. Neither did the mountain icon show up (no icons at all) nor a SOTA spot was sent out. Nothing happened at all to spot my test.

How do I get back to normal spotting for ALL entered activities?

I am on version April 25 patch 7.

Thanks and vy 73, Markus

Receiving SOTA spots does not require authentication.
Sending SOTA spots does require authentication.
You haven’t mentioned if you have refreshed your authentication recently which is required because it expires and needs to be refreshed from time to time.
You need to tap on the account and sometimes it will refresh for you, and other times if it is expired past another period, it will prompt you to do the full login again.
As for the icons, I can’t comment. I have never taken notice of that since I always use the shortcuts to spot myself.
Someone else may have comments regarding the icons.
Alan

Hi Alan

That’s it - the SOTA login in Polo showed “No account”. Thanks Alan! I probably wouldn’t have thought of that for a long time. You don’t automatically notice in Polo that you are no longer logged in to one of the partner systems.

I have hardly any expectations of the system and enjoy using the many interesting options that it already offers. But with this annoying and hidden point, I would like the Polo system to make it easier for me to know that I am no longer logged into my SOTA account when I open an operation with a SOTA activity. Preferably with a warning in red letters that disappears as soon as I am logged back into SOTA in Polo.

Thanks and vy 73, Markus

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I’ve opened a PR to hopefully improve things with some warning prompts.

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Looks great to me, thanks! That is dominant enough, hi.

Why does POTA not need my User-ID/password in Polo in a similar way?

Thanks and vy 73, Markus

POTA (and WWFF, WWBOTA, GMA) doesn’t require authentication for spotting.

OK, thanks. I was not aware of that. Even my GMA spotter only appears after log-in (for me).

May 2025 - thanks for resolving it!

Vy 73, Markus

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