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UKBOTA Advent Calendar Award 2024

General Rules

  • The 2024 UK Bunkers on the Air  (UKBOTA) Advent Calendar Award 2024 runs from 1st – 25th December 2024.
  • Two awards are available: One for Hunters, the other for Activators, there is no specific B2B award for this event. Additionally, a ‘Special Santa’ award is available for those who hunt and activate.
  • The Advent Calendar Award runs in parallel with other awards including: Annual, Lifetime, Night Owl and VHF awards.
  • The basic idea is to hunt and/or activate bunkers from the UKBOTA reference list. Only one bunker worked or activated each day can be claimed for the Advent Calendar Award.

Scoring and special rules

The Basics

The maximum number of bunkers that can be hunted and activated in the 25-day period, for the Advent Calendar Award is 25, i.e. one per day. Santa’s helpers have devised some mischief into the scoring! It takes some planning, especially by acivators, to maximise scores.

Santa’s Special Bunkers

UKBOTA bunkers containing the day of the month as a consecutive sequence of characters are Santa Special Bunkers for that day will open the advent calendar window for that day and score 2 points. All other UKBOTA bunkers score 1 point. The maximum points available for hunter and activator awards during the event are therefore 50 points (2 x 25).

Christmas Crackers

Each hunter, activator, short wave listener has two Christmas Crackers ‘they can ‘pull’. A cracker can be used on any day between 1st and 25th December. ‘Pulling a cracker’ opens the advent calendar window and scores 2 points without working or activating a bunker that day. To claim a ‘cracker day’ just enter the word cracker in the callsign cell, no bunker is required! If you try pull any more than 2 crackers you will not score any additional points!

UKBOTA Club Call

Working the club call, MX0BOA, irrespective of what bunker they are at (i.e. the reference does not need to contain the day number) automatically opens the hunter advent calendar window for that day and scores 2 points for the hunter ONLY. Activator’s who wish to use the club call should contact the NoV holder M0DXT. An activator using the club call can only claim 2 points for that activation if they are at a valid bunker, i.e. a ‘special bunker’.

Examples:

1 December

B/GM-0001, B/G-1032,  B/GI-0010 score 2 points

B/GM-0002, B/GW-0272, B/GI-0088 score 1 point 

15 December

B/G-0156, B/GM-0415, B/GW-0015 score 2 points.

B/GM-0205, B/G-0510, B/GW-0175 score 1 point.

21 December

B/G-2021 B/GM-0221, B/GW-0021 score 2 points.

B/GM-0202, B/G-1272, B/GW-0201 score 1 point.

Award Levels

Levels

Points

Advent Bronze Hunter/SWL/Activator

5

Advent Silver Hunter/SWL/Activator

15

Advent Gold Hunter/SWL/Activator

25

Advent Diamond Hunter/SWL/Activator

35

Santa’s Master Hunter/SWL/Activator

45

Special Santa Awards

 

  • Level

    Hunter Points

     

    Activator Points

    Special Santa Bronze

    5

    +

    5

    Special Santa Silver

    10

    +

    10

    Special Santa Gold

    20

    +

    20

    Special Santa Diamond

    30

    +

    30

    Special Santa Master

    40

    +

    40

Award Claims

Award claims should be made by email to awards@ukbota.org no later than 10 January 2025. Only the highest tier awarded for each of hunter/swl/ activator will be issued to each applicant. The award claim should contain the following information only (do not send trackers or logbooks): Your callsign, the awards you are claiming and level/tier. Example: M0ELF Advent Calendar Hunter Award 2024 – Gold.

Trackers

A single file spreadsheet tracker ins available for download from the our files area here.

This tracker will be compatible with recent versions of MS Excel and Google Sheets. The tracker will calculate whether a bunker is worth 1 or 2 points. The use of the tracker is not mandatory, it is simply an aid to recording and tracking progress in the award.