This month brings two significant association updates.
W7N – Nevada
We made two big changes for Nevada. The first was to make it metric. By that I mean 150-m prominence, rather than 500 feet. This brings in some new summits. With various Lists of John updates there were some other revisions too, e.g. several summits moving a bit, and some needed a new code because the new summit was outside of the old AZ. There are 98 new summits and 32 retirements.
The other change was to do with the 8-point band. We noticed that it didn’t agree with what was in the ARM. In this case we thought the ARM value was the better one, so we’ve dropped the boundary 500’ to 8,500 feet.
EA1 – Spain - North West
EA1 has now had the LIDAR treatment. We already tweaked the old summit positions and elevations. Now we have retired summits with low prominence and added those which were missed originally. There are 124 EA1 summits retiring, offset by 251 new ones and another 4 old ones coming out of retirement. Included amongst the changes are a few swaps along the border with EA2, three summits switching each way.
Just a reminder that sometimes even the official IGN mapping will slightly disagree on elevations, especially where a vértice is on a big base. I try hard to read ground levels from the LIDAR data, even processing the original point clouds when it’s a close call.
I hope it will not be long before there will be an opportunity for activators to get onto the new summits!
Andy has a few small tweaks to push to the database as well.
As Simon said, there are few EA1 changes left, these are summits swapping with EA2 and a few internal region changes. The database management tools can’t handle these automatically as activation/chase records need to be adjusted as well and that means they need to be done manually. I will do them tonight if everything goes to plan.
The name was corrected on LA/HL-176 and a very minor update to G was uploaded, a few elevation changes and position fixes.
Great job. Now I’ve got a bunch of new summits nearby to activate. Let’s see when we can do it!
Thank you very much to the Sota Management Team!
73
EA1AER
Juan
The following summits have moved regions but all other details is the same.
Old ref New ref
EA1/CR-006 => EA1/LU-079
EA1/LE-058 => EA1/AT-238
EA1/LU-070 => EA1/CR-051
EA1/AT-002 => EA1/CT-126
EA1/SG-015 => EA1/SO-042
The activation and chase history has moved to the new reference. This means if you had activated EA1/CR-006 your activation history would show EA1/CR-006. Now if you view your activation history it will show EA1/LU-079 instead.
The implication is if you find your log for EA1/CR-006 is wrong and you need to fix it, you will need to use ref EA1/LU-079 instead, you will not be able to find EA1/CR-006 in the database.
The following EA1/EA2 border summits were dupes. These summits stopped being valid on 30-Apr-2020. If you wish to activate them, you must now use the new references.
EA1/CT-077 replaced by existing EA2/BI-021
EA1/CT-086 replaced by existing EA2/BI-039
EA1/LR-038 replaced by existing EA2/VI-006
The following EA1/EA2 border summits were dupes. These summits stopped being valid on 30-Apr-2020. If you wish to activate them, you must now use the new references.
EA2/BI-007 replaced by existing EA1/BU-059
EA2/VI-020 replaced by existing EA1/BU-071
EA2/VI-063 replaced by new summit EA1/BU-113
Spain is starting to come out of lockdown and I know many EA activators will be keen to get out in the mountains. Please make sure you have updated any software, apps or notes you have to ensure you are using the latest data. There have been lots of changes in EA1 and after a lockdown, you do not want to find the summit you are activating has been deleted. SOTA mapping site has a buffered summits list so these changes will not be visible until it next updates which maybe 24hrs. I think SOTL.as runs from the live data so may already be using the latest data.
Since I live close to and explore a lot o W7N, it looks like this also made some 8 pointers now 10 points etc. Just looking within an hour of my QTH, peaks I’d recorded into my CalTopo have changed values for the better :D.
thnx for the update, a few of the Reno Activators had asked me why W7N was so strange in it’s points layout
Com’on over the border to W7N ‘Silver State’ Jamie; an open invitation to all! There are literally thousands of virgin summits here that have not been activated yet. We are pleased to have a few more 8 and 10 pointers out of the recent revision. Frankly, I’ve often wondered what the formula or rationale is to assign elevation boundaries to the point bands in the various ARMs. So many western US ARMs share similar topography and weather, yet the elevation boundaries in those 11 ARMS are vastly different and leave a lot of hams here scratching their heads! Must be something we don’t know. Anyway, there’s a lot of virgin SOTA territory in these 110,000+ square miles that define W7N! Welcome to all.
Funny you would say that Woody! I am doing 8-10 peaks this weekend (I have a 4 day weekend off work) so I am going to be doing some stuff in the EM region, I’ve got a map with a lot of W7N dream peaks on it. the HU region was the hardest one for me to find a peak that is going to be doable. I’ve had my eye on completing all the W7N regions at some point, this year will be the year
No more than 10% 10 pointers, roughly the same as 1 pointers, and roughly split evenly between the other bands, favouring 50m resolution height boundaries (roughly). /me waves hands around a bit vaguely.
On the W7N update…I see that NV’s highest peak, Boundary has been removed presumably as it fails its prominence relative to Montgomery when going from 500ft to 150m
Out of curiosity how much did it fail by?
It’s kind of a shame as its NV’s highest and NV has an awesome collection of mountain ranges, most all of which no one has ever heard of!
I think NV has more mountains than any other state in the lower 48.
I think most who activated Boundary aspired to adding on WH-002 but once there didn’t relish the journey across to it via a crappy looking ridge. Thinking about it I’m not surprised it’s off by that much.