p150

Associations
84

Chris, I did say I was not going to comment on the p150 issue but this question is not related as such and I feel warrants an honest answer.

Removing it is not very difficult as a programming task. The associations drop-down menu is populated in every case by the same piece of code. It can either provide a list of real assoications such as G or W7A or DM etc. or it can provide a list of real and compound associations such as “All W” or “All VK” etc. To remove the compound options is a few minutes work, it will take longer to do the background work (save working binaries, upload new code to server, save code changes in Git repo etc.) than to make the change.

As to whether it should go or stay is a different question. I know it’s a meaningless display so I don’t use it as such. I use it as a quick way to locate someone and their home association. However, if it is removed, then it will be a matter of days before someone writes somekind of screen scraping code that fetches the honour rolls for each association and makes an All Associations view themselves. I can already see activity from the server logs that suggests people are scraping the database for their own purposes. Removing the display will not remove the feature for very long.

For fun, I might randomise the display of All Associations. It will make it harder to compare associations. The downside is it will fill up my inbox very quickly with complaints and/or mails saying the DB is broken.

1 Like
85

Rather than taking away things that some will find useful and everyone is free to ignore, why not add some more options to the display:

All P150 Associations

All P100 Associations

But then to be fair we’d really want

All Associations with the same P and scoring bands as my home association

However, to be really fair we’d need some extra columns in the activator database, so that we could choose:

All associations with the same P and scoring bands as my home association, but only activators with the same BMI and inside leg as me

73, Simon

[What I’m hinting at here is - I find All Associations useful for finding people. I’m not using it to judge my performance against anybody else. I’d be surprised many activators are really that competitive. Levelling the playing field would be very hard if you wanted a fair comparison. I’m sure that point envy is not contributing to MT’s motivation for the whole P150 thing and I think it’s unreasonable to suggest that it is.]

1 Like
86

Can I pleeeaaase have a bit of that surplus amount of time some seem to have to do big activations plus coding in the same life… On the serious side: I wondered about the reasoning behind such competetive incentives (as they naturally will be seen) and doing them “officially”.
In a contest I have to live with participants doing their own lists from our score tables but they have a much more private character and are no “official” categories availabe on the organizers’ website. Besides tech issues the question is what categories organizers want to have for what reasons and how to balance fostering core activity vs rulework to level the playing field.

87

They are simply there, to be used or ignored at the whim of the participant. The fact that an activator or chaser has a certain position in world or association rankings has not the slightest effect on how much effort it took to achieve that position. The summits don’t lower themselves for a high scoring activator, or the propagation improve for a high scoring chaser, and only they know what the personal cost was in achieving any ranking.

As for that surplus time - I’ve been retired now for nearly nine years and there still aren’t enough hours in the day!

Brian

88

Hello, I am a member of the silent majority, and a beginner activator living in EU (only 5 activations so far).

After several discussions about the P150/P100 issues, I recently took a look of the maps and realized that DM, HA, OE are not the only associations that will be affected by new, strict prominence rules

My 2 cents about this whole issue:

  • I like strict rules, and P150 rule is quite fine
  • I agree that an organisation like SOTA must be ruled from above (no democracy)
  • It is impossible to level the playing field classifying geomorphological features. None of the classifications or rules (P150, P100 included) can be good for all. Compromises are inevitable.
  • It is also impossible to level the playing field regarding other factors (population density and summit locations, climate factors and seasonal bonuses, age of participants, spare time, fitness, etc)
  • Therefore, SOTA can hardly be a competition between activators (even within the same association)
  • The point system is fine (more or less). Lots of people (me included) like to be rewarded by gaining points.
  • As an activator, I can not care less if an activator in another association has P100 or P150 summits at his/her disposition. We are both trying to have fun as long as possible.

So what is wrong then?

Amateur radio is living its last days. Our hobby is dying. There are no new generations to come. After a few decades, the band will be devoid of ham radio signals.
(At 49 years, i consider myself among the younger SOTA participants)

SOTA is fine now. It will not end the day after strict P150 rule is implemented.
But it will die much, much faster.

In this moment, the centre of SOTA activity in EU is mostly in the associations that will be affected with the implementation of the strict P150 rule. SOTA in EU relies on those numerous and accessible P100 summits. If strict P150 rule is implemented, the number of easily accessible summits will decline, the number of (aging) activators will decline, the number of chasers will consequently decline too.

We will be left with excellent rules and infrastructure, but devoid of participants.
What is the point of perfect award programme with few participants?

The solution, already proposed by several participants in P100/P150 discussions:

  1. Clean all associations of summits that are less than P100
  2. Leave the rest as it is. Accept the compromise.
  3. Take care that all future associations comply strictly with the General Rules (as it has already been done for some time)

There is another solution, proposed by MT members:

  • Take it or leave it. If you do not like the rules, you are free to join some other similar programme, or make a programme of your own.

This solution is theoretically the best, but… I am not asking for a P100 rule for my association. I like SOTA to remain as it is. Alive. All I want is a populated list of announced activations, and a small pile-up of chasers when I activate my hill.

73, Fric YU1WC

Note for non-EU readers of this never ending debate:

Although SOTA is a global award programme, it relays on intra-continental contacts, since most of us use small powers and small antennas. DX contacts are an exception. So this whole issue affects only EU participants. USA or VK participants would not be affected by the possible decline of activity in Europe.

11 Likes
89

Finally a well constructed answer that says what needs to be said !!

I wish some more people would react in stead of only reading the writings of others and shake shoulders.

thanks Fric for your answer.

73
ON6UU
Frank

3 Likes
90

Dying? Probably not everywhere if at all. For instance, here in the UK there are at least three times as many hams as there were when I got my licence, and the total number goes up every year. I believe the situation is much the same in the USA. Of course, quantity says nothing about quality and we have to expect a high level of wastage, but I see no reason to plan the funeral of amateur radio.

Now a quick look at a bit of history. Have a look at the number of activators and chasers in DM by year:

2007 …127 activators…131 chasers
2008 …131…“…138 "
2009… 85…”…113 "
2010… 88…“…108 "
2011…128…”…131 "
2012…125…“…139 "
2013…131…”…154 "
2014…149…"…154 "

Note the drop in 2009, of about 35%, what caused that? That is when the MT required the removal of about 3,500 invalid summits. Not a few hundred but a few thousand. This, of course, caused outrage and predictions of the end of SOTA. It wasn’t the end, though, was it? After a couple of years the number of participants in DM returned to what they had been and have since climbed further.

This is what I expect will happen again. We will lose some participants in DM and then the numbers will recover. On past form this is a reasonable prediction - it may seem a cold-blooded way of looking at the situation but the MT has to think globally. Meanwhile SOTA is on the verge of a significant increase in the number of Associations in other continents, particularly South America and Asia. There are even a few European countries yet to join SOTA. Despite this controversy we are living in exciting times for SOTA.

Brian

2 Likes
91

Well I haven’t planned to die soon, do you know something different ?

That is not even a pessimistic view, that is pure narrow mindedness. The problem with the hobby today is that many forget why it started in the first place. BUILD SOMETHING !

Jonathan

5 Likes
92

Jonathan,

do not take my words literally, of course! :smile:

I mentioned this not to speculate about the future of ham radio, but to emphasize that the average ham population is already old. Reducing the number of abundant and accessible summits will decrease SOTA activity, I am afraid.

Fric

93

Look at it another way, some people get put off if something is too easy to achieve. I want mountains not hills.

SOTA will more then likely increase in popularity, with the number of general operators in amateur radio decreasing is a more plausible prediction from what I expect with time. Awesome website programming, good system stability, huge pile-ups, exercise - its very rewarding.

Jonathan

1 Like
94

Brian,

I wish I was wrong.

Major contests today have record numbers of participants, more than ever before. This could back your claims. But everywhere I see people complaining about lack of newcomers to the hobby, about increased average age. It is rare to find anyone below forties in the hobby. The result is that the average age of hams (and SOTA participants as well) is increasing. The capability to travel to distant summits, to hike, activate regularly - is decreasing.

I was looking at some maps with P100 summits around well populated areas in Central Europe. Many of those very active hams in Central European countries will find their regular P100 summits excluded from SOTA, with the remaining P150 summits being too distant and difficult to activate regularly.

I am afraid the recovery will be only partial. As time goes by, active hams are older and less numerous, and the (remaining) summits will become fewer and more difficult to access regularly.

I know, there are too much assumptions from my side about things I do not know from first hand - but that is my (pessimistic) feeling.

I know that SOTA is expanding globally, this is great. SOTA will not end for sure, as long as I am able to reach the summits I will be able to find someone to make those 4 qsos to qualify the summit (I hope).

Fric

95

Rather than allowing the core parameters of SOTA to be diluted for the benefit of ageing activators we should concentrate on getting more youngsters interested. I recruited my son to the hobby at age 10. I am still working on enthusing him to climb the summits though!

Simon

5 Likes
96

[quote=“YU1WC, post:94, topic:10669”]It is rare to find anyone below forties in the hobby.[/quote]That probably ties in with amateur radio being (these days) much more a hobby for folk with a fair bit of spare cash. At a guess (based on first-hand experience helping with training courses), the average age of folk taking the necessary entry exams to get their first licence is probably forty or more, at least here abouts, so a relatively high average age certainly doesn’t mean the hobby’s fading away.

Would it be nice to see more youngsters involved? Sure. Is it essential that more youngsters become involved to ensure amateur radio survives? No, not at all…

…but if you have (grand-)daughters and (grand-)sons, how about encouraging them to take at look?

73, Rick M0LEP

97

In many cases it is no longer going to be about climbing the hills - but about a distant car rides :wink:

300 km trip by car and 5 percent of this distance traveled by foot… :cry:

Karel

2 Likes
98

You really don’t need massive amounts of money to have fun… You just need an imagination.

There is soo much junk around nowadays. You can make a BitX20 SSB Trx out of a bag of 20 Mhz Uc crystals and a Arduino. Colin has proved its capable of making contacts into VK from G,M. Look at his reaction on that video, that is the feeling you get when you have done it yourself.

Before I bought my KX3 that is exactly what I did, I built my own because I was in the middle of my University term - I had little money to buy such a radio - so I built one !

I certainly think SOTA isn’t easy for youngsters, you need to drive really. But then again If you live in Scotland or Wales a number of summits are accessible via Bike.

Jonathan.

99

Simon,

It is not about the benefit of ageing activators - it is just practicality.
It is neither diluting the core parameters - the parameters were already diluted in some associations and SOTA as a whole is still functioning very well.

To illustrate practicality - we could set SOTA parameters not to P150, but to 3 highest peak in each association. But that would not be practical. There would not be much activations in most associations.

Excluding Spain and Great Britain, most of SOTA activity comes from Central Europe, from the associations that will be affected by strict P150 rule. I am afraid it would not be practical to reduce drastically the activity in those associations. I am in favor of the principle “if it is not broken, do not fix it”.

By the way, you deserve a Ham Radio Nobel Prize should you find a universal method for introducing youngsters into ham radio! This is a much greater problem for our hobby than this P100/P150 debate.

Fric

1 Like
100

A whole 5%? Wow! :wink: :wink:

If you’re going to do serious points-scoring activating then travel is inevitable.

73, Rick M0LEP

101

…and spare time. I expect there’s also a significant proportion of folk taking up amateur radio at about retirement age.

1 Like
102

Hi Brian,
the real outcome will be interesting to see. Most participants not only think but also live locally - calculating everyday life in driving distances - as ridiculous half an hour or an hour more may seem from the global point of view. The 2009 cut reduced IMHO the number of summits in a “human” driving distance but didn’t emptied many of this radiuses SOTA-wise other than has to be expected now.

Time budget decides like it decides about the degree of contest participation. I know my statistics in this field and I know the available time budget of “our” participants on weekends from home for an activity that can be fragmented - other than a SOTA activation. If a car seller wants to sell as many cars as possible he will have to reduce price&standards. If he wants to make no compromises he will sell a top quality product but has to live with the effect of the average wallet size on numbers of buyers.

SOTA in its purer form with one inconsistency less will certainly not die but will have a reshaping of its participating cohort. Time will tell and expectiations will differ - like ours do.
Chris DL8MBS
(one of the restrained ones thinking only locally - with easily predictable outcome as I want to hike and operate instead of driving even longer)

1 Like
103

Curiously, both my children enjoyed the mountaineering/walking aspects but were never even remotely interested in the radio.