Should Black Mountain be GW/SW-??? rather than G/WB-001? if the RHB is the standard reference for SOTA hills in the UK.
Quote 1 from May 2007 MARHOFN :-
Black Mountain (32C, LR161)
Tom Read: I always assumed this lay on the border between England and Wales, and hence could be arbitrarily placed in either. However, my visit there revealed that the summit cairn, which appears to be at exactly the right spot, is a full ten metres away from the English border (aka the Offa’s Dyke path), and is fully in Wales.
Quote 2 from RHB 2006 update :-
Changes since April 2002
Two new Marilyns were discovered and added in 2004-05: Meall Chomraidh and Arnside Knott. The number of Marilyns has therefore risen to 1554 - 1214 in Scotland, 179 in England, 156 in Wales and 5 on the Isle of Man (Black Mountain is on the border but counted in Wales).
Quote 3 Key to Marylin Hall of fame 31st December 2006
Key: S=Scotland, I=Isle of Man, W=Wales, E=England, M=Murdos, C=Corbetts, G=Grahams, D=New Donalds, H=Hewitts of England and Wales, T=Tops. *=Honorary member. Black Mountain is now deemed to be in Wales only.
Maybe it should be in both, one side of Offa’s Dyke 6 points in Wales and the other side 6 points in England. Would certainly make it a very popular activation. Imagine 20 points with the Winter bonus and 40 if you did it just before midnight on New Years eve and again on New Years Day ;o)
I guess it depends on how borders are defined. I don’t know. Does a border have “width”, or is it just a line of infinite length, a fractal like the coastline. And exactly where across the crest of Black Mountain is the border. Is it absolutely coinicidental with the Offa’s Dyke Path? Or is it another distinct line a few metres to one side? If the border is supposed to follow the absolute crest of the ridge, then Black Mountain is indeed a border summit, and the Offa’s Dyke Path, at that point, is in England. And oing back to my previous point, does the border have ‘width’? ie would ten metres to one side not make any difference, it would still be “on the border”?
Saying all this, RHB says it counts Black Mountain in Wales, but in its listings, it appears in Section 38B West Gloucestershire and Hereford & Worcester - an English section!
I would conclude that as long as Black Mountain remains in section 38B according to the RHB people, then it stays in England as far as we are concerned for SOTA. If they decide to move it into one of their South Wales sections, then we can follow suit and change its SOTA region accordingly (as happened some years ago with Aconbury Hill - from G/CE-006 to G/WB-024.
I think you mean 18 and 36 points Steve. Anyway, don’t get excited, this isn’t going to happen! The English and Welsh associations started at the same time with almost identical scoring bands, so there was never any need to include Black Mountain in both associations. Where border summits do occur in two different associations in mainland Europe, they are usually differently scored due to the contrasting terrain and hence scoring bands of those countries.
In any case, there are rules to cover this rare situation, so two sets of points by doing one activation with one association’s reference, then another with the other association’s reference is not permitted.
When activating Foel Goch on 5MHz, Graham G4JZF wanted to know if I was in Gwynedd (South of the Trig. point) or Conwy (North of the trig. point), so he could claim the right WAB square. It seemed the exact location of the aerial would be the fairest way to decide.
“Which side of the trig. point is your aerial, Ian?”
“Erm, well the fishing pole is strapped to the trig. point, and one leg of the dipole is to the North and one is to the South.”
In reply to GW8OGI:
The WAB ruling is that the whole of the aerial must be in the area. If this is not practical then the feed point must be in the area.
As far as I know it is just a line beteen borders the same as the NGR lines.
On some maps the border lines are shown are quite wide but I think that is just to show up the boundary.
As regards WB-001 the NGR SO255350 places it in England according to my OS cd rom.
Many a time I have offered both SJ97CHS and SJ97DYS to WAB enthusiasts from Shining Tor. My beam was mounted on the (border) wall. However, it would have been practical to put the beam entirely in one county or the other. I always understood that if you were set up ON the border, then you could give out both squares. Anyway, I digress…
If the border line has a finite width, is the area of the line in
both countries or neither
How often do you find Country signs on roads exactly opposite one another? Virtually never. Of course the border could cross the road obliquely, but not in every case. However, I don’t recall having travelled over a section of poorly maintained “disowned” road when crossing a border, even on a minor route, so there must be some agreement in place as to where the border is and for highways technically it must be of zero width…
