For those who are not aware, Jon G4ZFZ has recently decided to step back somewhat from SOTA to focus on, amongst other things, his paid work. Jon’s impact on the SOTA infrastructure is largely immeasurable - he ran the initial SOTAWatch and SW2 on his personal systems, and rewrote the whole lot from scratch into SW3, including the backend API that gets so much work thrown at it. He also made the changes to the Reflector we all use daily, from a small system as part of SW2 to the current system running modern software in a hosted environment.
We thank Jon for his commitment to SOTA over the past 10+ years, and look forward to him having some time to actually spend on the radio for a change
Jon’s absence creates a hole to fill, and Andy and myself have looked to the new world and found a willing volunteer in Josh @WU7H. Josh brings a wealth of IT experience to us from running systems in the education sector, as well as expanding the MT further in the US and spreading our geographic coverage. Welcome, Josh, and we look forward to your contributions to SOTA!
I don’t think that’s accurate.
If the equator divides the Northern and Southern hemispheres, I see most of the MT members are located in the Northern hemisphere.
In case you are talking about Eastern and Western hemisperes, the Long. 0º Greenwich meridian extended through the Pacific Ocean side of the World along the Long.180º line must be the border line to act as the Eastern/Western hemispheres separator. In this case, I see several MT members located in the Western hemisphere, being Western all locations named with a West Long.
Please, excuse my pedantry as a way to try to overcome the lockdown boredom
73,
Jon was involved with SOTA from quite early days (2004 I think) when the infrastructure was a database and a Yahoo Group. His first contribution was a very basic spotting system. His early activations were inspirational to us all. For a while he seemed to specialise in nightime activations in the snow. https://www.gm4zfz.com/ A big thanks from me and welcome to Josh!
I would also like to thank Jon for the work he has done for SOTA. It was truly amazing when we started out to discover so much material on-line. I had not realized that so much of it was Jon’s work.
Very many thanks, Jon, and I hope stepping back will give you more chance to get out on the hills - once we are let out
73,
Rod
Many thanks Jon for all your input to SOTA over the years. You have always been quick to assist when a bit of help has been required. All the best for the future from me and a warm welcome to Josh!
Thank you Jon @GM4ZFZ for all the long in time, great service and priceless legacy to have provided to SOTA. We will always be extremely grateful to you.
Warm welcome to Josh @WU7H and good luck!
73,
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