As per the number of available entities, SOTA has surpassed IOTA long ago.
Please consider on the one hand, that only some 1140 (+/-) IOTA entities are available worldwide. (Sorry, but I am not an IOTA expert, even if I worked 700+ entities and have confirmed 400+ entities. The reason is: IOTA rules change too frequently and it is focusing excessively much on money.) Consider that exclusively France has 2649 summits which qualify as a SOTA entity on the other. (Only F/AB and F/AM regions surpass IOTA with their 563+739=1302 summits! Hi! But many of them can be approached only by means of alpine climbing techniques. These are analogous challenges like Rickal island, EU-189)
Similarly Islands of Croatia Award (IOCA) will also have surpass SOTA with its 1180 or 1280 (I don’t know for sure) entities sooner or later! As of today, the CI-xxx IDs do not reflect this yet due to the high number of never yet activated inslets; for the time being CI-807 is the highest number ID, and the highest available award degree for chasers is IOCA-400.
In reply to G3CWI:
I hope we don’t end up with the IOTA style pile-ups - with chasers not listening to what is going on and just calling over the top of QSOs… :o(
Gave up IOTA a long time ago due to the poor quality of operating - IOSA is still worth a bash though :o)
In reply to G3CWI:
I hope we don’t end up with the IOTA style pile-ups - with chasers not
listening to what is going on and just calling over the top of QSOs…
:o(
I can’t see that happening I suspect that SOTA will never get into quite the same state as IOTA because with IOTA people are “collecting” the islands whereas sota is subtly different. The other point is that there are far more SOTA expeditions than IOTA ones so the chaser “load” tends to be spread out rather more.
Depending on XYL, hoping to help spread the load a bit while we’re on Exmoor in a few weeks time… New antennas to try out!
Now, back to the shack roof - 23cm beam to go on the mast…
73 Graham G4FUJ
Although there are far more SOTA activations than IOTA, the SOTA activations are much shorter, and this leads to a stronger sense of urgency amongst the chasers, which is one reason for the poor operating that we often hear. The single most annoying piece of liddery is calling blind on the channel, particularly on VHF, and often QRMing a contact that is actually taking place. Some quite well-known chasers are guilty of this!
I am afraid that as more and more chasers join in the QRM problem will only get worse. Sad.
When I received my 1st IOTA-CC-100 in 1979 (from SWL Geoff Watts)
no one would have thought how IOTA grows until 2010.
In fact the better known islands-certificate (outside the UK)
was the Island DX Award issued by the Whidbey Island ARC (W7).
After the RSGB overtook the programm from Geoff Watts they have
changed quite a few conditions (and not all chaser were lucky with them…hi)
Bye the way the designer of the well-known IOTA-logo was
my good friend Willy Weise (HB9CZW) s.k. in 1993.
Take this as a FWIW, but the IOTA Honour Roll for 2010 lists 625 callsigns.
The SOTA 2010 Honour Roll for Activators (All Associations) lists 680 callsigns and the Chaser Honour Roll (All Associations) lists 739 callsigns.
I realise that the IOTA system depends on checked QSLs and is therefore certain to be slower and more cumbersome than the SOTA system, but even so it suggests to me that at present there are somewhat more people active in SOTA than in IOTA, and SOTA is still expanding. I am quite open to correction on this, raw data rarely tells the whole story, but that is how it looks.
The Honour Roll appears to have a minimum of 50 percent
of the confirmed number of groups.
Last given number for the IOTA-CC-100 (basic award) was around 2770.
I wondered about that, Richard, but couldn’t find out any more.
Fritz, I think that last figure is the aggregate for the 45 years that IOTA has been in existance (25 years under the RSGB) whereas I am trying to isolate figures for just 2010. Can anyone point me to complete IOTA figures?
Thanks Fritz - by that measure IOTA is way way ahead of SOTA! We have no chasers anywhere near 50% of all the summits. If however you take the cut-off as 50% of the leading Chaser’s score there are only 18 on the list.
Of course SOTA has an activator section too.
I don’t think SOTA and IOTA are easily compared in any meaningful way.
With all due respect to the activators and chasers on this forum, I have to say most of the argumentation quoted here is rubbish.
First I have to say I might be a bit biased towards IOTA - my IOTA CC dates back to 1989 and I have just recently started to chase weak SOTA sigs.
Re: nember of groups / refs: IOTA management has decided to put a cap to the maximum number of IOTA groups on the world to level the playing field for those who joined later and keep needed management efforts within limits.
Comparing the number of available references is just meaningless IMO. If somebody wishes to do so, go ahead and start counting the summits and islands world-wide.
Further IOTA - contrary to SOTA - is a strictly administered programma where both activator and chaser accomplishments must be verified. It had been made very strict when some tried to cheat on both sides when the popularity of the programma started to grow immensely. (just think of the IK1… activation series in XE and OA in early 90s)
SOTA could use a somewhat more strict approach as well. As a newcomer I often check the summits in GE and a few times found that activators must have been running like gazelle or flying between two consecutively activated summits because that distance simply could not be traveled on bicycle or let alone on foot in such a short time.
The same can be told about chasers as well. I have the luxury of having a very competitive station (on HA/EM-012 730m ASL btw) at my disposal where I obviously enjoy better than average reception of SOTA stations and I can often witness that prominent chasers call SOTA stations completely out of phase, they do not confirm the received reports (because they most likely did not hear a beep of it), and later upload those “contacts” as valid QSOs into the database.
As a minimum I would expect SOTA to do a cross check between the activators and chasers logs and remove the NILs (even better mark them as an undeletable NIL in the chasers log!). This can be done rather easily in the database and in my opinion if SOTA wishes to grow further, it is unavoidable.
In addition SOTA pileups can be as unruly as that of any IOTA new ones, this experience any newcomer can get very easily on 7032 on any Saturday morning.
In summary I think both programmas have their pros and cons as well as their heroes and crooks. Claiming any better than the other is just meaningless and respectless towards those who put energy into the other.
I don’t think the discussion was about which program is better, but about which program is most popular/has the most people active in it in 2010, and whilst participant information is easily obtained from the SOTA database it is difficult to even infer it from the IOTA database, so it is a moot point.
Automatic cross checks are built into the SOTA database but have had to be temporarily disabled due to a problem which we hope to resolve in the future. Manual checks are not possible, I am told that the database holds about 1,500,000 contacts already and the rate at which they accrue is accelerating.
With regard to doubtful activations, every case that the MT has investigated has turned out to be just about possible. Some that looked to be really impossible turned out to have been achieved on ski, which changed the calculation. But of course, SOTA is non-competitive so if anybody does cheat they are only cheating themselves…that is the official line…but any verified cheating will incur a penalty. However, if anybody has incontrovertible evidence of cheating they must send it to the MT in confidence and not anonymously, I will not tolerate cheating arguments on this reflector, they are likely to become acrimonious.
Here you are the original question of Mike - KD9KC:
I just read in another thread here that SOTA has now surpassed IOTA.
I would like to see the data on that. More members? More QSOs? More summits than islands? Just how?<<<
And here is my reply for this issue, that you objected:
As per the number of available entities, SOTA has surpassed IOTA long ago.<<<
What’s wrong with this? As far as I can concern, my reply was absolutely adequate and correct. Wasn’t it?
As of today, the CI-xxx IDs do not reflect this yet due to the high number of never yet activated inslets; for the time being CI-807 is the highest number ID, and the highest available award degree for chasers is IOCA-400.
I suspect that SOTA will never get into quite the same state as IOTA because with IOTA people are “collecting” the islands whereas sota is subtly different. The other point is that there are far more SOTA expeditions than IOTA ones so the chaser “load” tends to be spread out rather more.