Some of my thoughts and I know I don’t do all of these all of the time, but in my imaginary ideal world…
I’m less inclined to add route info if I feel I’m just repeating what is in every “mountain guidebook ever”. I enjoy “reading mountains” when I can’t get out and play, hence an ever expanding book case so I et lots of daft ideas reading various books, magazines, interweb pages. That Wainwright chap did a pretty good job on the Lakes and there’s plenty of stuff available for the bigger GM stuff especially the munros.
Like Richard I’m generally reluctant to put down times. Distances & ascent no problem (when I remember) but times are very subjective, I’d rather just give an indication of the type of ground.
Summitsbase webpage is very easy to use and I feel allows me to add if I want shorter comments such as for example “broad summit, no shelter”, I’d feel a bit wrong writing just that in a sotawatch summits info article but hopefully useful none the less.
I generally haven’t linked any reports to specific summit pages, thinking that folks would just search the reflector but point noted, it’s much easier if all the resources are in one place, must try harder Iain.
Sometimes I’m actually prompted to write something in the summit info by folks asking me questions when they work me on a summit, it suggests to me there may be a demand, rather than writing info for hills nobody is going to climb.
As folks have said, if I’ve been up anything that anyone wants info for, my email is on qrz and even if I haven’t activated it I might have stumbled up it pre-sota, always happy to help as they say. I’d rather write stuff for hills folks would like info for rather than a self generated random list as it were.
I’m less inclined to add route info if I feel I’m just repeating what
is in every “mountain guidebook ever”. I enjoy
“reading mountains” when I can’t get out and play, hence an
ever expanding book case so I et lots of daft ideas reading various
books, magazines, interweb pages. That Wainwright chap did a pretty
good job on the Lakes and there’s plenty of stuff available for the
bigger GM stuff especially the munros.
Wainwright seems reluctant to update his work which is now very out-of-date and, in places, inaccurate. Hill don’t (often) change of course but paths do. Although there are lots of sources, the radio slant that we have does make our need for information slightly different from the average hill-bagger.
73
Richard
G3CWI (I still try to add tips to summits where no information is lodged here)
"There are plenty of sources of information for the Scottish hills intended for walkers. Even the old Poucher book with its sooty black and white photos marked with the routes can still be useful. A favourite with me is “100 Best Routes on Scottish Mountains” by Ralph Storer (Warner Books, my edition was £6.99.) This book gives starting points (often with parking info) and a map of the route with details of any difficulties. A good browse around the book shelves of a good climbing shop will always turn up something useful! "-G8ADD
That’s exactly the type of post I think more of the hills need. It would be great if we could add that with a batch operation to all relevant hills.
I know as a newbie in 2008 such info for local hills would have been a huge help, and I know if I were a visitor to Scotland I would really love to find a post like that.
Now, almost 2 years on I know these general sources pretty well for a few local states but it has taken me almost 2 years and I still don’t know it all.
Now can I hire you full time for a few years to make those posts for the 1,103 hills of W1 in 5 states?
Like Richard I’m generally reluctant to put down times. Distances
& ascent no problem (when I remember) but times are very
subjective, I’d rather just give an indication of the type of ground.
For those who carry GPS, GPX files contain time information. If you switch on your GPS’s tracking function as you start your hike, you will then be able to create a GPX file for upload as a text file to the summit page. GPX files contain elevation and time data for your hike, and prospective activators who get the file from the summit page and then put it into a good program can also get grade info and total climbing height (if there are saddles and such on the hike). Google maps/earth are also GPX compatible, although google earth handles them much better.
As an aside, each Summit page lists the number of activations by band…
Could this be broken down by mode (only CW, FM, SSB needed?)?
[mode=Geek]
I note from the CSS that the layout only uses 780px (and the summitActivity box is 200px) so making that a bit wider shouldn’t cause any probs, even for uses of Mobile devices
[/mode]
Jim G0CQK, G/SB regional manager, shows the way with this stunningly constructed and informative website for the G/SB region. As this is a region where I have so far only activated 1 of the 8 summits available, this is a terrific resource for me.
Now wouldn’t that be good, if there was a site like this for every SOTA region?
Going back to my original prompt in this thread, you will also notice that Jim has placed links on the relevant SOTAwatch summit pages that take you to the corresponding pages on the region website.
What an amazing resource! You’ll gather that I haven’t thought about visiting the SB region yet as it’s such a trek from the SW of England but perhaps I will do so as a result of being tempted by all the useful info.
I wanted an excuse to learn about web design and here’s the perfect project (to do the CE and WB regions) however … I’ve still “got a bit on” at present so I’ll have to curb my enthusiasm and maybe pop some pictures of the summits on Flickr and link them to my routes as a temporary measure. They’re no masterpieces of photography but they should serve for now.
I had forgotten just how good it was, and suspected that it was not as well known as it should be. Now if that does indeed inspire you and others to do something similar for the regions you manage, then that would be magnificent.
It is a splendid resource as I’ve said several times in the past. There’s a huge amount of work gone in to produce info on 8 summits. It doesn’t scale easily when there 1271 summits to document.
Andy
MM0FMF
(plugging away at the summits info each night)
The 2010 edition of the MARHOFN has just been published, so Jimmy will be finalising the updated ARM very shortly. Once this has been received and accepted by MT, the website and database should get updated then to reflect the RM changes.
Hi Tom, I don’t know for sure but it may be that the locator square was derived from the ordnance survey national grid reference using a computer algorythm. This would explain why the locator squares are only listed on UK summit pages.
Maybe one of the MT would be able to give you a better answer.
All the summits have a Lat/Long and Locators are normally calculated from that (as they are based on Lat/Long) - to get from NGR to Locator would require NGR to Lat/Long conversion too, so that doesn’t really make any sense to me.
