I received a message from Mie 9M2CDX. He wants to make a 9M2 region, West Malaysia. Who can help him/me?
Hi sir. My name Mie, 9M2CDX
I and my team would like to participate a SOTA activator which I detail below.
Date : 3 - 5 June 2022
Frequencies : HF Band
Callsign activator : 9M22DX (will be confirm)
Location. Name : Bukit Perangin
Elevation : 711 metres (2,333 feet) Latitude : 6.371° or 6° 22’ 16" north Longitude : 100.5174° or 100° 31’ 3" east
Operator : 9M2CDX, 9M2KDX, 9W2EYR, 9W2VGR, 9W2HXP, 9W2KVW, 9M2JDX
Equipment : IC-7300, FT897D, HF multiband G5RV, solar equipment, battery, power supply.
I hope my application is approved and considered Best Regard, Mie 9M2CDX
There seems to be a 9M6 association over in Sabah, on the eastern side of Borneo. But it has only one registered summit, Mt Kinabalu or Low’s Peak. (I walked up that with my teenage kids in 1989). Whoever organised that may have some good ideas that would help the 9M2 group over in mainland Malaysia.
Andrew VK1DA/VK2DA
Google Terrain which is a part of a Googles Map app provides 20 m contours World Wide which is enough until better maps are available…It seems better than Google Earth.
Bukit Perangin. A popular tourist destination.
Elevation : 700 metres . the 711 m is not confirmed but the map shows is not less than 700 m and is less than 720 m. The summit is enclosed by the 500 m contour and no higher peak is within this contour. It therefore qualifies as a SOTA peak.
According to the map:
Latitude : 6.37185° Longitude : 100.51690°
OSM toppo (Google app) shows the summit inside the 710 m contour. This map has 10 m contours for this peak but I no longer use it in VK as I have found better more accurate maps.
The summit of course needs a reference number but my knowledge of Malaysia’s districts is abysmally low so I can’t make a sensible suggestion,.
There is info on starting an association on the SOTA site somewhere. As Andrew VK1DA says help is available nearby.
As I understand it a new association can start with just one summit. IMO the data above is enough, but it requires work by volunteers and new associations have to wait until certain dates for data base release.
Whether a rapid one summit association can be formed in time depends on the Malaysians as well as the MT volunteers.They often let their day job take precedence over SOTA.
Hi Ron,
there have been exceptions (for a good reason). Look at 3Y Bouvet Island - it only has one qualifying summit as far as I know - hence that is an association with one region and one summit.
73 Ed.
There are a number of one summit Associations, but what I think was meant was one summit when there were other possible summits to be determined. Associations have been started in the past with a temporary summit list, the list being completed at a later date. The easiest one is where the highest summit is taken to start the Association as it will always be ??-001.
May I suggest. As Bukit Perangin is located in West Malaysia, summit no can start with 9M2. Next follow by which region of the summit is located.
For the information, there are 11 states and 2 federal territories in West Malaysia. For Bukit Perangin, it is located in Kedah. Abbreviation for Kedah is KDH.
Historical Note:
Several years ago when I was responsible for summits, I spent many many weeks working on 9M2 potential and at that time because maps for new associations were an extreme rarity, I did a full SRTM analysis of the 9M2 area. With research I was able to identify a good number of qualifying summiits by name. I sent the co-ordinates of almost any potential summit that came out of SRTM analysis to the then 9m2 team but they made no attempt to identify any summits from that list but continued to energetically pursue their own list of summits that they were familiar with even if those summits didn’t qualify. I got no feedback on any of the summits that I was able to indentify by name from research.
It was a frustrating time and eventually I gave up.
I passed over the Summits Role to Simon @G4TJC some years ago (you could say, brilliant choice, well at least I do) as it was too time consuming as I got that bit older. So it is up to his current team now. I wish them luck for 9M2. I checked my files today and all 9M2 data I had has been deleted. I can’t keep old data for ever.
For the 9M2 team. See what you can find if anything from that previous 9M2 exploration, it may help. In my experience, you have a lot of energy for this but do focus it carefully and do not just pursue you own knowledge of summits in your own local region. You must carefully take direction from Simon @G4TJC and Andrew @VK3ARR who are experts in summit identification and qualification… I wish you the best
73 Jim
G0CQK
Many thanks @G0CQK for your effort. It is really sorry as previous 9M2 team made no attempt to identify any summits from the list.
However, lets start again. Now, we need help to verify whether Bukit Perangin is a qualifying summit or not. If yes, hopefully SOTA MT can at least register it as first qualified summit in West Malaysia.
As with 9M6, 9M2 is an area with plenty of candidate summits and of course full analyses on record. But sadly the issue is that we don’t have national mapping available. We’re not going to proceed without quality mapping from the local agency. Global sources are no substitute for this. We’ve looked into mapping availability here before and I don’t think the situation has improved. The Web site 9M2 replies with 404s for any pages which look like they could be of interest.
9M6 was listed with a single summit as a concession to a local team planning an ascent of the island high point. We knew it would qualify and was bound to be 10 points. Unfortunately the planned activation fell through. Follow-up work didn’t happen (see above); consequently it is possible we will take 9M6 off line pending future work.
Hi Simon,
Not all countries with amateur radio operators have the “quality National Mapping” I think you are asking for.
Reliance on on- line sources is the norm outside larger cities in many places No surveyor is going to hack his way through 20 km of jungle just to get a high quality measurement of a remote peak let alone establish contour lines in the jungle.
Remote sensing is widely used in Australia. National and State maps are always not in perfect agreement so even the high quality maps have some differences. But most candidate peaks can be easily sorted into their point scoring category even if there are a few metres uncertainty in height or location.
For SOTA, in places that haven’t had every inch surveyed multiple times over 200 years you have take the Winston Churchill approach. If what’s available now is “second class”, use it and upgrade when “first class” is available, if it ever happens.
SOTA peaks regularly have their heights changed, positions adjusted and sometimes are retired as better information becomes available.
This is a hobby and no financial loss is incurred if a summit is not initially identified with sub metre height or locator uncertainty.
I am quite concerned that new associations might be denied formation because of rejecting currently available resources which are really quite fit for purpose and ask that an open mind be kept on this.
No Ron, we’ve been burned before. Developing an association takes a lot of my (or Andrew’s or Csaba’s) time and a lot of time from local volunteers. Reworking dodgy listings later on takes even more time.
Typically those global maps rely on SRTM. RADAR DEMs have various problems which is why we like to cross-check our analysis results with a map. When the map is itself derived from the same imperfect DEM it doesn’t add anything.
Mapping agencies don’t do so much hacking through the jungle but they do fly LIDAR or photogrammetry programmes and base their maps on those. The trouble is many are quite protective of their products or just plain ineffective at presenting them to the public.
We get a stream of enquiries about adding associations and we should really make it clear that a condition is access to trusted mapping resources.
Can you define dodgy in terms of measurement uncertainty? For example are 20 m errors permissible if the prominence is at least 150 m + the uncertainty?
I’m agree with @VK3AFW. Just use the best mapping data that we can find currently. Then, it can be adjusted when better information becomes available.
I can assure you with current available data, Bukit Perangin is the highest summit in the region. SOTA MT can review it with below data:
Yes, agree again. As there are not many team in any country that have full effort to carry out this SOTA activity. So, when there is one, SOTA MT should help then facilitate the application. A few certain rules can be relaxed.
No, we’re not going to proceed without national mapping. Where we’ve done this before it resulted in very unsatisfactory results. Yours is not the only one I can assure you.
It doesn’t work like that. Even a 1-m error can easily cause a swap between about-equal-height summits many km apart.