Jim,
Many of the trig points have different names to the familiar map / summit / hill / area names.
For instance:
The trig point on Walbury Hill is listed as “Inkpen”. I worked Bill G4WSB/P from there this morning.
The trig on Prestbury Golf Course is listed as “Dale Brow”.
The trig on Nine Barrow Down is listed as “Corringdon”.
The trig on Great Weston Fell is listed as “New Farm”.
And so on and so forth.
Agreed Andy, the list is the list, that’s clear enough. Nonetheless, one cannot help but wonder why some well known listed trig points that are concrete pillars in good condition, are not included. And why some destroyed/removed/moved trigpoints are included.
And why some destroyed/removed/moved trigpoints are not included. (Given the above).
Even on the first day of this new award, I heard of a situation where someone went to activate a pillar listed on trigpointing.uk, only to discover on arrival that it wasn’t listed in the WAB trig point list.
Well we know making and maintaining a list of 100 is trivial, a list of a 1000 is not hard but maintaining our list of 67000 summits is hard work. Hell there are still some errors in it and we have the MT and lots of keen AMs and it’s hard work! So I’d expect a few rough edges on something like this.
I put both SOTA names and Trigpoing list names in my list for the simple reason that without that there will be confusion.
Poor activation planing. That’s the same as climbing a Munro (it’s on the Munro list) and expecting it to be a Marilyn. Most are but a few popular Munros are not. Driesh and Mayar for example.
Without doubt a preparation fail. However, I expect that until it is defined what constitutes a valid trig point to activate from (not just “cos it is in the list”), then such instances will continue. In SOTA the lists are the ultimate decider, but there is a clear and stated objective definition for whether a site goes in the list or not. I really do think that is needed.
Hello,
I see a couple of alerts for tomorrow for SOTA+WAB Trigs - good stuff. I missed Bill G4WSB this morning as I was changing the battery on the Land Rover. Hopefully there will be a lot of ‘dual’ purpose activations this year. I may go out sometime this month or so and do solo WABs - there are about 5 trigs within 2 miles of me in East Sussex.
Night night
Mike
WAB Books: 4445 ~5268~5269~~~16878
Doesn’t sound too encouraging !. Hope the ride was good Richard.
Seems to me there is a long way to go yet before things “work” wrt to the award. Early days though.
Jonathan
I can’t speak in relation to what happened on the net as I did not witness it, but out of interest Richard, why did you chose a trig point that is not on the WAB list and trigpointingUK have as “destroyed”?
It’s very simple Dave. I read that your source data comes from trigpointing UK. Your data is a list whereas to activate I find a spacial format rather more useful. Thus I went to the Trigpointing UK website http://trigpointing.uk/trigs/ and typed in Macclesfield. This produced a list of nearby trig points. Some were not pillars others were either inaccessible by bicycle or likely to bring me into conflict with a landowner. One that appeared to meet the criteria of being accessible and a pillar was Croker Hill.
My mistake was to assume that the WAB list uses the same database as the trigpointing UK site. It does not (or at least it uses a subset) and so next time I will add another stage and check back to the WAB list.
73 Richard G3CWI
Fair enough, Richard, but as this is a WAB award, I would have thought it prudent to cross check with the WAB list as well. There’s also the blue grumpy face alongside the trig on their listing which I thought would have been a bit of a warning, following the link to the photo album of the trig point would have definitely put you off!
WAB was given access to the database in .xls format, from which the current listing of pillar trig points was extracted and ones listed as missing or destroyed (as with yours) were deleted. There may of course be transcription errors and errors in the original database, but short of going out to check all 6000+ before initiating the award, the only way to do it is adjust it as we go on.
Because of WAB’s involvement, even whilst doing the groundwork for this award, quite a few errors were found in the TrigpointingUK database. These included duplicates, (especially in Northern Ireland where two grid systems has been used), impossible grid references and trigs in the Republic of Ireland. It is hoped that their database is going to be the better as a result of WAB’s involvement.
Hi everyone
Thanks to those of you that contacted me this morning on what was a cold and very windy GW/MW-011 Foel Cwmcerwyn. Now this summit has a trig point TP-5522 - Precelly (WAB spreadsheet) and I had alerted on both Sotawatch and the WAB Yahoo User Group that I would be active at around 10:30. With 60m in a poor state and with only Don G0RQL and Brian G8ADD answering my calls it was with some trepidation that I called into Barry M0IML/p for an s2s and trig2trig on 40m. As Barry had finished he handed me the frequency and with a spot by Mike G6TUH I was into a pile-up immediately but not what I was expecting. The pile-up was made up of the ‘faithful Sota chasers’ many of which collect the WAB squares so were including the trig today as well with a brief comment to that fact. Despite the cold an enjoyable activation 
which kick started my WAB Trig points - 34 contacts on both HF and VHF and a bonus s2s with Richard GW0IBE/p on Snowdon - thanks Richard. :
As I mentioned in an earlier posting above I make no apologies for not getting involved with the ‘WAB net’ as I feel that I need the freedom to ‘pull the plug’ as those who really want the Square or Trig will find me. My main objective today was to get my SOTA points and to start building on the WAB Trig Awards which will come naturally from activations. Providing there is a (WAB recognised) trig on summit I will continue to Alert on both sites and will follow the same ‘modus operandi’ - perhaps other Sota Activators could do the same? Constuctive comments are welcomed.
73 de Allan GW4VPX
Today on Foel Cwmcerwyn
Full report in the next few days on http://mw0bbu.blogspot.co.uk/ although I think I’ve said enough here 
Hello Allan,
" I feel that I need the freedom to ‘pull the plug’ as those who really want the Square or Trig will find me. My main objective today was to get my SOTA points and to start building on the WAB Trig Awards which will come naturally from activations…"
I think your approach will work very well.
Thanks for today. It almost looked like summertime in your photo if you had not been rugged up 
Night night
Mike
Hi Allan
I am curious to know if you felt that any WABers found you as a result of your alert on their website? Like you, I am rather skeptical about using the WAB net - but I will give it a go again. Outside the SOTA summits, there are actually not that many trig points round here that I would feel comfortable activating without getting prior permission from the landowner.
Vy 73 for 2015
Hi Richard
I felt that they did not find me at all even though I had Alerted on both sites but only spotted on Sotawatch. Many of those wanting the trig/square were regular SOTA chasers. My feeling is that if there is other ‘activity’ on the ‘WAB net’ then maybe the trig is less of a priority.
I have not yet spoken to Barry M0IML on how his day went and to compare his first SOTA/trig activation of the day with the trig only activations he was going to do later. Still, I’m happy that many were grateful for the trig/square that I activated today.
Unlike you I have many trigs which require no permission for access and I do intend to activate them but I feel it will be have to be through the ‘net’. I’m going to have a chat with Dave G4IAR over the next few days as I have further questions and suggestions for him.
HNY Allan GW4VPX
I’m sure Allan won’t mind me copy/pasting part of my email reply to him, which went as follows:
"I think the main problem with the lack of WAB’ers is the reluctance to leave the established net when there is quite a bit of activity on there. Some of them would inevitably take a few minutes getting through the other callers to you and as a consequence would lose their place in the net running order as they would be missing when called.
Had you called into the net, as I have said before, you would be treated as a priority and quickly run down. My XYL Judith, G4IAQ and myself activated 3 trigs yesterday and between them totalled between 60-70 contacts with less than 15 minutes actual air time."
We all agree, though, that it’s the activator that calls the tune when it comes to how they operate. Likewise collectors have their own modus operandi.
At the moment the WAB nets are busy with all the annual awards having just started and I’m sure that will settle down. As Allan said to me “It’ll come together eventually”.
Hi Alan, sorry for late comment but I have had diffulculty getting on the reflector.
Many thanks for the SOTA and Trig Point today. I should have put you on the WAB reflector but not everybody on the WAB is on there but will do so in future. As Dave says some net controllers do not like information passed over as it disrupts the net.and have been told off HI HI.
73 Graham G4JZF
I’ve been thinking about the “activation area” rule for WAB trigpoints, and have come to the conclusion that either I have grossly misunderstood it or it is absurd. On the WAB page, it says this:
“To be valid for the award, the activating station must be located within 30m of the pillar measured horizontally or vertically whichever is the closer.”
The emphasis on “whichever is the closer” is in the original - in fact it is underlined as well as emboldened.
So what this says to me is that you measure the horizontal distance H to the pillar, measure the vertical distance V to the pillar, and the smaller of these must be less than 30m. So I see three valid cases:
Both H < 30m and V < 30m. No problem here, you are clearly “near” the trigpoint.
H < 30m but V > 30m. This seems fair enough, but I would expect this to be most unusual. How many trigpoints are on such steep terrain that that you can be within 30m horizontally yet more than 30m above or below it? What’s the chance that you could safely activate from such a point? I suppose there might be cliff edge trigpoints that you could activate from the beach…
H > 30m but V < 30m. This sounds essentially the same as the SOTA activation area rule with 30m instead of 25m, plus the added complication that the activation point may be higher than the pillar. The problem I see with this is that with no constraint on H, the activation area can be truly vast. Moreover, since trigpoints don’t have to be on distinct peaks with a prominence constraint, these activation areas can overlap. Think Kinder Scout.
I was thinking that it might be fun to activate Britain’s lowest trigpoint, TP4449 at Little Ouse. It’s about 35km from me. The flush bracket height is listed as -0.533m and there is a -1 spot height on the map. So I thought about how close I’d have to be to get within 30m vertically. Hmm, that sounds like “anywhere on the fens”, to me.
But it gets better. My house is on relatively high ground for the Cambridge area. I’m at about 25m. The ground falls away gently to sea level in the direction of the fens. I’ve checked the profile of the straight line path from here to Little Ouse, and I’m at the highest point. As I am about 26m above TP4449, I conclude that with the rules as written, I could validly activate it from home, despite never having seen it.
This seems crazy. But I cannot think of any other interpretation of the rule as written. I can only conclude that what is written is not what is intended, or if it is, the person who drafted it does not realise just how flat some parts of Britain actually are.
Hello,
Why not just apply some sense to the intention perhaps
Cheers
Mike
Common sense would have saved a lot of typing wouldn’t it?
Because rules don’t work like that Mike. What Martyn has suggested is that he is perfectly with the rules as written to activate from home. Yes, that’s not the point of the award but he could activate it that way and be legit. Which kind of defeats the purpose of having the award for activating trig points if you don’t have to make any effort to get “near” one.
And I know from having worked on some of SOTA’s rules how terribly hard it can be to express a simple concept concisely and accurately.
Precisely. Obviously I have no intention of exploiting this loophole. I certainly wouldn’t activate TP4449 without actually going there.
But given that many trigpoints are difficult to access, I think we do need to know how close we have to get to be valid.