Summit reference input

If you look at the past spots there are a fair number of incorrect summits input. One of my recent spots was incorrect G/xx-nnn instead of GW/xx-nnn.

Possible ways of reducing the number of errors are:

  1. Check that the input data refers to a valid summit and put up a warning saying “Summit invalid - do you want to continue” or similar

  2. Change the inputting procedure to include the fixed - as well as the fixed /
    ie use 3 boxes for association, region and number. It seems illogical to have the / fixed but not the -

If both of these were implemented I think there would be a reduction of inputting errors.

73 John GW4BVE

In reply to GW4BVE:

Yes, interesting points here.

I have to agree, this could be improved. I like the idea of just issuing a warning rather than blocking since some people seem to put ambiguous references in sometimes when their plans aren’t clear or perhaps where a chaser has been unsure of the summit.

I have put this on the list. However, I’d be interested to hearing more comments from people on spot and alert validation policy.

73, Jon

In reply to GM4ZFZ:

Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?

73 John GW4BVE

In reply to GW4BVE:
I agree John. It would be useful to have an automatic “warning” from the system to say if a summit ref. was not valid or didn’t make sense. This should apply to spotting and alerts. However it should just be a warning and allow an overide for deliberately ambiguous or tentative Alerts.
Q