Criteria for allocating summits points?

SOTA has been running under the present system for a long time. That creats its own momentum. The MT has been willing to make small adjustments as and when the need arises, but as time goes by it becomes less likely that a fundamental change will become necessary. SOTA has proved surprisingly adaptable to conditions in different regions world-wide, and so far no compelling reason to change point scoring has emerged. If a compelling reason does emerge - I don’t see what that might be but stranger things have happened! - then all the activations and chases would have to be re-scored in the database. Just for reference, we have just passed 219,000 activations and 2,646,703 chases, that is a lot of re-calculating and checking the continuing validity of certificates and trophies. To embark on that needs a really compelling reason!

When the GR meets the Ice Giants, it will be time to take a step back and decide whether the GR will benefit from another little tweak. We have tweaked before and I am sure we will tweak again as the necessity is perceived, but wholesale changes are another matter…:grinning: Deciding not to give a bonus to summits that are dangerous at their most amenable, and lethal most of the time, does not bend the GR. Recognising the alternative possible need for a suicidal bonus in two seasons of the year for the ice giants is a minor tweak. We will cross that snow bridge when we come to it!

Careful what you wish for. Perhaps within a year!

Wow, and all this from a simple request as to where to find the rules and regs !!

Now, i wonder what the chances are for 4 QSO’s on 2M from the summit of Everest —

73 Neil

They have used handies to communicate between the various camps for years!

When you are up to your neck in crocodiles, you tend to forget that you set out to drain the swamp.

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Step down from the higher elevations, altitude junkies, and look at another kind of complaint. Here in Okinawa (JA6/ON-) we have two 2-pointers and about 49 1-pointers. The highest point on the subtropical coral island is only about 370 meters. There were no activations at all until fairly recently (ahem, ahem!) but now we have a few keen hams, but the motivation is to activate somewhat lacking. A handful of chasers in JA, VK, abd ZL have been great anyway. We won’t suffer from lack of oxygen, but a good half of the summits are “accessed” only by overgrown jungle trails, with summer bringing high humidity, insects, and the poisonous habu viper. That makes them far from an easy stroll, so if some of these yet-unactivated peaks had a higher point rating, we’d have more chasers and more activators. Steve JS6TMW

Arguing with topography is like arguing with the weather!

Unfortunately I seem to be unable to access the ARM by the usual route, so I do not know if you have a seasonal bonus. I assume not. The climate of Okinawa Prefecture is given in wiki as humid subtropical to tropical rainforest, on this basis it might be possible to justify a summer bonus - IIRC summer bonuses have previously been granted to arid regions on the grounds of very high temperatures - but any application must be supported by evidence about the climate and its effects on activators.

How lucky of you, you can activate SOTA and make some Habushu! :wink: Even on Honshu many summits are not reachable in the summer due to the overgrown jungle, so I can imagine how tough it is on Okinawa. Machete-time! Good luck!

Standard reply #3 is called for…

Summit info in the database is showing for all Japan regions, but the links to the ARM’s do not seem to be available ?

In this case - not! It is a dead parrot, it has ceased to be…you know how the sketch goes!:grinning:

As far as I am concerned, we do not need different amounts of points for different summits at all. After all, all DXCC and IOTA references count the same for the respective award programmes, whether it is a large country with a numerous ham population, or a small, remote, uninhabited island. I’m happy about every new summit, entity, or island that I might “work” or manage to “activate”, no matter how many points they count. Variety interests me far more.

73, Jan-Martin

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I can sympathise with that approach, Jan-Martin, but - it is what it is. After fifteen years, and over four million SOTA QSOs, we have too much history for fundamental changes to be practicable.

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What fundamental change? We already have what Jan-Martin describes!

Well obviously we disagree on this, but I would say that going to one point per summit whatever its height would be a fundamental change since it makes all summits equal.

I don’t see how. We run two methods of scoring and compiling honour rolls, both of which have their associated awards suites. One is the “points” table, the other is the “uniques” tables - which do EXACTLY what Jan-Martin desires.

… which rather negates the GR principle that “it’s not a contest”.

73,
Walt (G3NYY)

The main argument of some MT members is that there are no perfect tools to reflect difficulty given the level of variability. Obviously, if everything had to be perfect to be allowed into existence then we would still be living in the stone age and SOTA would have never come into existence in the first place.

There are some very elegant solutions, including some proposed by some MT members themselves but no agreement yet. It will take a competitor to SOTA with a difficulty point system to be created to have any kind of progress on this front I believe.

Some become annoyed when this topic is being brought back but there is a reason why it keeps being discussed again and again and again. Thou shalt not speak of a difficulty scale! :slight_smile:

73,
Arnaud

“SOTA is not inherently a competitive activity, it’s about individual aspirations and working towards a goal at your own pace. However, it can be fun to see how your progress compares with that of others, hence we publish our Honour Roll on the internet.”

A familiar statement that you must have read a few times by now Walt?

You are right Arnaud that there is no “perfect” tool. All of the suggestions we’ve seen to “improve” on the simple elevation-based system, as discussed on various reflector threads for instance, both fail to measure truly the difficulty and raise a barrier to adding summits to the programme through the extra burden of measurement/calculation. And then you see there is also a sentiment among some for no variation in scoring at all, for various reasons.

Personally I think that figuring out which summits give you the most points for the least effort, or whatever, adds to the fun of the game. That’s something that can be played on a local scale or across associations. Beware though that many of the easy pickings (i.e. not compliant in prominence) across Europe will be meeting their retirement before long.

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