Sotl.as uses the summits list.csv to bring in summits which, although fixed around 1000 UTC yesterday means that it will lag until whatever automatic process picks up the new file. SMP should be fine
Brian, thereâs no reason to take it personally.
The summits diversity should be a challenge, not an obstacle, and it is almost completely gone!
Sometimes a little snarkiness helps to lighten up an unpleasant fact - and sometimes it only exacerbates the problem and my mouth gets me into way too much trouble.
Karel
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Hallo Michael, Ich habe gerade mal geschaut in meiner Nähe (ca 200Km) US sind noch 2 Berge geblieben hi, was fßr eine Schande und dann brßstet mann sich mit neuen 1 Punkte Berge, hi,ich fahre doch nicht 400km fßr einen Punkt, so wurde wie in DM nun auch OK aus dem Programm erfolgreich abgewickelt, 73 Klaus DL8DZL(OK8DDR)
Nothing personal in this, Karel, as moderator I have a duty to keep this reflector a pleasant, friendly and informative place. I moderate with a very light hand. I tolerate a little snarkiness, a good meal benefits from a little spice, but I try and stop it from going too far.
When you look at it dispassionately, what you are doing is complaining about the MT insisting on the rules of SOTA being followed. In other words the MT is doing their job, and you donât like it because you can no longer activate for SOTA on hills that should never have been on the OK summit list. You have benefited for thirteen years, but it is over now, it wonât come back, and you are on the same footing as the other Associations in SOTA. Your complaints sound more like âsour grapesâ than a legitimate concern.
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Let me explain something about mountain lists.
But first of all if you donât understand topographic prominence please read the excellent Wikipedia article.
Any and every mountain list has some prominence criterion, formal or otherwise. This is essential unless you live in a 1980s computer game, because in real life summits are lumpy and without a P criterion literally every rock would be its own summit.
Take for example the Scottish Munros. These are defined as mountains over 3000 feet. Although there is no formal Pmin, in practice (with a single exception) it is 49m. Of course most are a lot more than this and some regard the âRealâ Munros only as those with P>=150m.
So thatâs an example of a summits list with a high(ish) minimum elevation criterion and a (practical) prominence criterion that is quite low. This gives a reasonable length of list for the area of GM, but note that there are NO low summits.
On the other hand SOTA uses a prominence-only criterion. Looking again at the GM example this removes some of the Munros from our list but adds many more. Most notably it adds some low summits.
Now letâs look at OK.
(Yes, it is working again today! Sorry about that, especially to the LA/MR op who was caught out by the failure yesterday.)
And here I am showing a digital elevation map of OK with various summit overlays: As you can see OK roughly describes a bowl with high summits around its perimeter, lower and flatter in the centre, especially towards Prague.
So, you have seen how the P150 listing comes out â these are the yellow circles. Note that the lowest summit is OK/US-081 at 395 m.
Letâs try a more hybrid classification. For the green + symbols I have dropped Pmin to 100m but set minimum elevation to 600m. Despite the total number of summits going up, we see that the 53 lowest P150 summits have been discarded, most notably groups near Prague and Brno.
Now letâs assume that the full list of active and retired summits would meet the practical prominence requirements for a Munro-like listing. So I took all summits, disregarded P completely, but imposed a minimum elevation of 914 m (2000 feet). These are the red x symbols. The number of summits has dropped (but maybe we missed some - we never intended looking for these after all) but the most obvious difference is that they are all at the perimeter of OK. So very bad news if you live in the centre.
So, I assert from this that stating the P150 rule does not work for low mountains is actually back to front. It is a much better rule than the alternatives.
Having one criterion to fit well all associations is not easy of course. This is why General Rule 3.5.1 was introduced to allow P100 associations when otherwise the summit density would fall below 1 in 2000 km². As it is, keeping Pmin so low as 150 m means that we are adding incredibly large counts of summits e.g. to LA and VE7.
âSo increase Pmin in those associationsâ you might say. That would be really unfair wouldnât it!
âWhat about just doing away with all of this and letting us list what we likeâ you might say (which basically seems to describe the old OK list). Well, if we canât define it topographically we canât generate lists without lots and lots of input. Take South America for instance, where I have at best some tens of ops helping to create the lists. Or take remote parts of VE where (please excuse me!) nobody lives. We would end up just with the odd summit that somebody heard of. Having topographical criteria means that we can process data and determine factual lists. Iâm an engineer, so to me this is good. If you want arbitrary lists covering small areas, these things exist. But they are not SOTA.
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Hi all,
Tomorrow I will try to activate a few of new summits in OK/MO.
Welcome activators & chasers 
73, Jarek
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No wonder I am excited. In practise it means driving a car instead of pedaling my bike.
I understand the reasons well enough.
Karel
Thanks for the activations today Jarek using your Czech call OK8MA - the Czech Republic is still a great place to go activating SOTA, I am not put off by a much shorter list - The OK/VY area with only 4 summits and the OK/ST area with just 8!
Also to the other activators putting OK SOTA ATNOs on the air this weekend, well done and thank you. I saw OK2PDT Jan, OK1HCD Stan, OK2OP Jirka, OK1MLP Karel. Iâm sure there will more new ones activated over the coming weeks. (Sorry if I missed anyone out).
As a regular visitor to the country (8 Tours since 2015) totalling around 50 days operation, from the 228 summits now listed I only have 30 SOTA Completes. As I enjoy it so much in Czech Republic for many reasons, as soon as Covid-19 is no longer a threat to my life I will be returning there again for SOTA.
There is a proliferation of summits in the OK/US, OK/MO and OK/ZL regions for me to go for and a good number of supplementary summits en-route to those areas when driving from Prague Airport to call in on.
Many of us knew that work to revise the OK Association was ongoing - I think we heard about it first at Ham Radio in 2018 and that it was only a matter of time until the job was done. Iâm glad it took a couple of years!
Thanks to the MT for revising the database overnight, and the supporters of other software and apps, mapping and logging etc for updating the items they provide at no cost to the users. I think we should all recognise the amount of work that goes into keeping things operating when incorporating changes like this one into the programme.
73
Phil G4OBK
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And hopefully I will be able to join you again. We had some great tours to OK, and like you,I am really looking forward to getting back to such a wonderful country and friendly people.
73 Victor GI4ONL / OK8VM
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Dear Phil and Victor,
It was great pleasure to meet you promptly last time in Czech Republic.
I hope during your next coming we will have more quiet meeting allowing us to discuss more things.
Thank you very much for constant support me, the same thanks I extend to another activators who very often comes to my log.
I was very close to complete 100% of old OK/MO and now after change I will do my the best to complete 100% of new OK/MO.
I will continue during coming weekend if WX allows.
Ahoj, Jarek
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Dear OMs, I am just trying to figure out what is the purpose of SOTA? I was thinking main purpose was to enjoy the nature and radio. I am trying to show young operators, that amateur radio has a many beautiful ways to enjoy the hobby and SOTA was one of them. Now I have to switch and tell them that they have to wait until they obtain driving licence to reach summits. In my opinion SOTA managment should reconsider if SOTA is fun and hobby or long term challenge.
I dont want to say to make SOTA easy, but in the era when amateur radio community is getting older and we need to bring youngsters to our hobby is current reducing 80% of summits pretty foolish step backwards. My future activations of summits will be mostly in GMA programme.
Enjoy your hobby guys, I hope to meet you on the bands.
73 Pavel OK1NYD
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Is there no public transport in your country?
The General Rules put it like this: âThe purpose of SOTA (the Programme) is to encourage Amateur Radio based activity from the summits of hills and mountains in countries around the world and to provide an award system for Radio Amateurs in all DXCC entities. The Programme is intended to encourage activity from clearly defined peaks including major mountains. To enable participation in the Programme to be as wide ranging as possible, lesser peaks may also be includedâŚâ
I recommend that you re-read section 3.5 Guidlines for the definition of a Summit. It goes into great detail, but the essence is that summits can only be included in SOTA if they have a topographic prominence of 150 metres or more (with one clearly defined exception.) This is fundamental to SOTA, SOTA was never intended to include every bump in the landscape, SOTA was from the very start confined to summits that were special, summits that stood out amongst their surrounding summits, not from being higher but from being more seperate.
Pavel, did you not ever read the General Rules? Did it never occur to you that there was something wrong about the Czech summit list? Didnât you notice that summits were easier and more plentiful in OK than they were in surrounding Associations?
The bitter truth is that until the first day of August this year there has NEVER been a SOTA Association in OK. For thirteen years the Association in OK was a fake masquerading as SOTA. It almost passes beyond belief that no amateur in OK ever noticed something that was quite glaringly obvious to visiting hams from other Associations, who then complained to the MT. Activators in OK and their Chasers have amassed considerable scores of points from summits that should never have been put forward to the Management Team in the first place, summits that betrayed our trust. The MT has allowed these scores to stand unchanged but would have been justified in deleting them.
The purpose of SOTA is exactly as given in the General Rules. If that purpose is different to what you thought the purpose was, that can only be because you did not read the General Rules as carefully as you perhaps should have.
I am sure that you will get a lot of enjoyment out of operating the GMA summits and I wish you well, but never forget what was pointed out above, that the GMA summit list includes the SOTA summit list. You donât have to abandon SOTA, but when you activate a SOTA summit, you will know that it is a SOTA summit because its prominence makes it special.
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Hi Richard,
I ran a GIS query and found 4 active OK summits within 1 km of a railway station, as the crow flies:
| Ref | Station |
|---|---|
| OK/KA-049 | Karlovy Vary-BĹezovĂĄ |
| OK/PA-018 | Litice nad OrlicĂ |
| OK/US-068 | SebuzĂn |
| OK/US-077 | HornĂ Kamenice |
Only the first two came up in a timetable search, although the lines all look active.
There are 28 summits indicated as within 2km of a station. 50% of active summits are within 4km, but of course that might not help if itâs the wrong side of a river or something.
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Usually when I encourage youngsters to join me on SOTA summits, I offer to drive them to the trailhead too (or their parents take them). No one yet has been forced to get their drivers license, and I am 4 hours drive and 1.5 hours walk from the nearest 10 pointer.
Still, at least this is at least a reworded variant on the couple of OK hams who have been contacting the MT with a template email complaining about the list being made compliant.
I suggest that others that wish to contact the MT kindly read the threads explaining the decision:
- The purpose of SOTA is as per Brianâs post above.
- We understand that youâre upset, but as pointed out, we just administer the rules. Calling us âidiotsâ (as some contactors have) is generally not a good way to bring us around to your point of view.
- Having to drive 1-2 hours to a summit puts you ahead of many other associations worldwide. You could always move to Arizona or Nevada or even Mississippi. Or even VK3 or VK5
- The only âgeomorphological conditionsâ (the current phrase of choice it seems) that SOTA uses is prominence, in accordance with the General Rules.
No one has yet given a single compelling reason why the OK association deserves special treatment under the general rules. I mean we even found a summit listed with a P of 20m, meaning it was still in the activation zone of the other summit. You could activate two summits legitimately without even moving
If folks wish to keep sending the template, go for it. The template does not contain any argument that will sway us at this point. It sounds like venting and comes across as such. We are more than willing to help you draft suitable complaint letters to Beaches on the Air and Lighthouses on the Air about the geomorphological conditions preventing OK participating fully in those schemes too.
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Where can I find the earlier versions of the SOTA rules? Just to remind it all.
Karel
Karel,
I am happy to confirm, the very early SOTA rules, when OK first joined, did allow for AMs to include non P150 summits that were still significant high points in that country. This exception was withdrawn from the rules many years ago.
But even then, the MT did not expect associations to be adding points that were as little as P30. Unfortunately, at that time, MT did not have access to the mapping or technology it has today, and so the submitted lists were allowed to stand on trust.
Many years ago now, this access did improve, and it was clear that some associations needed work. DM, for instance, was one of the first to be updated in order to be fully compliant with the rules. As has been repeatedly stated, the OK team was requested to review and update its summit list, but had not engaged at all with the process.
The OK association has fortunately, and remarkably maintained hundreds of non-qualifying summits in its association for many years while the MT has prioritised adding new associations over reviewing old ones.
The OK association has already had âspecial treatmentâ in being allowed to keep hundreds of non-compliant summits in its association for around 13 years. Yet it seems some OK OMs want more special treatment to continue!
It wonât. All associations will now observe the General Rules.
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Thank you Tom, I wanted it to be seen not just as pure arbitrariness.
Karel
Maybe OK hams are not aware of it, but it seems that OK association still has âspecial treatmentâ. They were rewarded with extremely generous 10-point banding in their association:
1-pointers: 8.33% of all summits
10-pointers: 22% of all summits
the current rule of thumb is, as I know:
approx. 5% for 1 and 10 pointers, and the rest distributed uniformly if possible (ideally 22.5%)
(banding border heights are at 50m intervals and they dictate the formulas above)
I know associations can not be compared, but I can not help it. In YU association (6 years old, one of the first to be made from scratch under new rules) we have:
1-pointers: 14.62% ! (I will never understand why so many)
10-pointers: 8.63%
Here in YU we are not blessed with high-alpine-style mountains, and those 10 pointers are, as in OK, mostly arranged along borders, far from central parts.
As many other activators elsewhere, I can only dream of activating SOTA by bike (!), I have to drive at least 200 km to reach proper mountains, I work from 9 to 5 and have only weekends and holidays for SOTA. And worst of all, I do see SOTA as a challenge, I do like to activate those higher summitsâŚ
Before SOTA, I was actively caving for 25 years. The areas we regularly explored were 250 km from home, sometimes much more. We accepted this and enjoyed our hobby, we had nobody to complain to about karst here being thin, rare, and not uniformly distributed 
73, Fric YU1WC
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Closer to 10% in those bands. Roughly evenly distributed in the other bands. A few exceptions or rules of thumb are in place, like a general â>3500m is 10 pointsâ which skews some of the LU associations high. I have all the info to survey Nepal too, which should have many 10 point summits