Why is W6/SD-437 a summit yet Kingston Peak 500ft higher- in the same range- is not?? The overlapping regions are ridiculous as well but never mind hehe.
Clifford
KK6QMS
Kingston Peak is a SOTA summit.
Well must be the idiotic overlapping regions. The SOTA system is so annoying sometimes. Love/hate.
http://www.sota.org.uk/Summit/W6/ND-063
“Northern Desert”
ya right
ridiculous
Take it up with the local AM - the SOTA MT rely on local advice as to where summits should be located and rarely decide ourselves on region locations. I’m sorry you find it annoying, but the AM may have a reason why he did it that way.
Appreciate the suggestion but not worth my time. Just have to waste time referencing multiple regions to see if a summit is included even though the 2 I am wondering about are right next to each other. Decisions made for reasons other than common sense and consideration of usability.\
SD - Southern Desert:
CD - Desert Ranges:
ND - Northern Desert:
ND is north of the Mojave Desert. Also next to Death Valley, so pretty much desert.
The regions aren’t really rectangular. They have specific boundaries, but we didn’t draw those out for SOTAmaps.
Overlapping regions…the original W6 ARM was a manual “best of” selection, with reasonable regions. When we revisited that with software finding summits, some of the original regions had more than 999 summits, which didn’t fit the SOTA designator. So we had to make new regions. The new ones try to follow geographic and political areas.
In the ARM, the Northern Desert region boundaries are described as: “This region was created in version 2 of this document and overlays the northern portion of the Desert Ranges region but excludes the White Mountains and Inyo Mountains. Its southern border with the Southern Desert region (W6/SD) is formed by Interstate 15.” Obviously, not well represented by a rectangle.
The overlap is also annoying where I live, in the San Francisco Bay area.
One solution would be to make new designators for all of the original summits and stop using those regions. That might be more bother than it is worth.
wunder
hahahah great info. Silly system!! You say that but wait- some are near the MEX border- SD?? NOPE- CD
The example in the OP literally shows 2 peaks RIGHT NEXT to each other but are in diff regions. hehe- sigh
I just cannot take SOTA seriously. I do love it. But not without caveats!
Thx
C
Have you tried the Range feature in SOTAMaps? That ignores region boundaries and finds summits within a certain area. SOTAMaps is developed by Rob DM1CM and is not administered by the SOTA MT. Rob’s pretty good with feature requests if there’s something missing you’d like to see.
Who said there’s anything serious about SOTA? 
But seriously, absolute statements like that aren’t really useful. How should we fix the summit designators? Give us some way to resolve this issue that we can work with the local AM to try fix. We’re actually pretty reasonable at fixing things that don’t make sense; we just rely on others to make sure it isn’t silly in the first place. As wunder’s post says, this was done largely by the W6 AM, (which, if i recall correctly, has recently changed), as the W6 association evolved from the original list. It’s also one of the reasons we try to get as much of a new association surveyed as possible, so we don’t get these kinds of evolutionary issues pop up.
At the end of the day, it’s a designator for a large pile of geology clumped in one location, and no matter what decision is made, there’ll be someone complaining it’s the wrong decision.
Clifford
How we arrived at what are overlapping regions is now history and the decisions of people that have long ago ridden off into the setting sun. Attempting to correct for that now is a considerable amount of work which could be obviated by using the tools differently.
As suggested, you can create a list of peaks that transcend regions on SOTAMAPS. Pick a spot and you can see a list that are within X mile circle centered on that spot to mention just one approach. If the UX experience of SOTAMAPS isn’t to your fancy then alternatives such as SOTAGOAT on an iPad or iPhone will also provide you a consolidated view that hides regions and even associations.
Hope that helps and keep on activating!!
Paul W6 Association Manager
Ok thanks Paul will give that a try on SOTAMAPS!
C