A really good question! The SOTA Complete Roll of Honour (persons who chase and activate!) works perfectly without regard to altitude points!
Quod erat demonstrandum!
73, Alfred, OE5AKM
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As does the Uniques honour roll. You choose the way you want to track your own progress in SOTA.
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Sic faciam tua!
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I don’t see the point of all this. SOTA is what it is, it is unlikely to change, and participants (nearly ten thousand of them) are free to enjoy SOTA in any way they want within the rules. This thread is as pointless as arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin!
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This reminds me of a Scottish tale of a comment by a mother watching her son, in a military passing out parade.
“They’re aw oot o’ step but our Jock”
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Panta rhei - even SOTA! (Not quite sure but I hope so.)
73, Alfred, OE5AKM
One of the many cool things about having the internet available is that if you have a great idea for a new amateur radio award, you can set it up yourself and run it just the way you want.
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I don’t believe in angels 
Let me clarify some things:
In my understanding SOTA wants to provide data
- to mark a participant’s individual progress
- to indicate a participant’s position/rank.
Both can be achieved by simply counting the activations undertaken by an activator or worked by a chaser. Of course this method is much easier than first defining hight bands, then allocating altitude points to these bands and at last adding the altitude points.
All I want is to point out that the easy method could replace the method in use. It’s up to the SOTA MT to adopt the new system or not.
As for me the above is a suggestion, not a demand, and I know it can be hard to change a running system: The devil is in the details…
73, Alfred, OE5AKM
PS: As I do not log my QSOs I have no personal interest in pushing the old or the new method (which might correlate highly concerning the outcome).
Yes.
No.
If you can explain to me how making volunteers rewrite large sections of code to support this model while simultaneously trying to deal with legacy issues around old points scores is easy, I’m all ears. It’s easy to say, it’s not so easy to implement. You are just shifting the complexity from one area to another.
As Richard said, create a new mountain scheme with your model if you care enough about it. You can learn about the complexities of managing a scheme like SOTA, from the technology through to the politics through to the childish behaviour of a disturbingly increasing number of hams through to the language issues, etc, etc.
It’s fairly clear from the comments to your poll there’s no appetite for change, and since this by your own admission doesn’t impact your enjoyment of SOTA, why persist even with the suggestion? At best it comes off as stubborn, and at worst as disingenous stirring of the pot.
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Could somebody close the thread, please? I don’t want him to get a heart attack…
73, Alfred, OE5AKM
Your concern is touching.
Indeed.
We’ve got a successful programme that nearly everybody knows and loves. We’ve got rules, a scoring system, honour rolls, a database, ARMs, websites, documentation, Mountain Goats and Shack Sloths. SOTA has run like this since 2002, based on in depth and detailed discussions before then. You are kind of 17 years late to the party Alfred.
But here’s the good news. We already have scoring systems that better suit your tastes. They are in addition to rather than instead of the points system.
We have:
The SOTA Completes section - this records the raw total of the number of summits a participant has activated and chased.
The Uniques section - this records the raw total of different summits activated.
And finally, best of all, we have exactly what you ask for. At the end of every year, I produce a table based solely on the number of activations conducted, regardless of points or repeats.
So we have what you want - and more besides - already. All you have to do is ignore the points-based honour rolls, and just look at the annual number of activations table.
You’re welcome.
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