There’s a lovely picture of you with a theodolite in this or another thread. We look forward to you evaluating and finding summits that should be included due to marginal P150 using said theodolite.
It’d certainly be a lot more use than your continuing these threads.
That’s why I wanted to know more about it.
Sorry to bother you.
UK SOTA summits are evaluated using a Leica Differential GPS by a group that is officially recognised by the UK Government Ordnance Survey. You can see them at work at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqJhkfCRizie5BxwKTYxImw. There are surveys of Meall Cala which failed to make the grade at 149m prominence, Harter Fell G/LD-028, Arnside Knott G/LD-058, and many others. The group spends most time checking out the marginal P150 summits.
Thank you very much for your comprehensive approach!
73, Karel
Ad Methology:
Yes, alogorithms are fine and can find summits for whole country, but still humans shall rather make final decision and choose potentionaly another close hill/mountain peak for summit. OK/MO-005 looks nice on map but is permanently closed beause of nature protection. OK/OL-060 is publicly available but under constatnt surveilance of security of hydroelectric plant. I could also imagine that some tourist over exposed summits could be also swopt within same mountain.
Ad Notification:
I was quite upset when I returned from activation of summit which disappear from the list, took me a whole day to get there, to get up acompanied with a lot of sweating, down and back for expected 6 points. Unfortunately the first sign, that something is wrong I got at upload of TSV log. Too late.
Yes, I know:
“There’s no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department on Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now.” (Douglas Adams)
I am sure that broader notification would be appreciated for next time.
Ad normalization:
Rules and also Summits shall be set at beginning. I believe that many OK, DL and hams in general (in the past) as I, joint the SOTA program based on summit list, because they made a decision that they have a chance to participate in such challenge. And I undestatnd they right to be upset or disappointed when rules/lists are changing so dramatically during play. Till reading of this topic I didn’t know about existence of envy hams. I believe that only them helps this wipe, which is positive if they won’t be envy anymore.
Computers don’t make the final decision - human(s) do the final checking against maps, but a nearby close hill or summit does not meet the prominence requirements. If it did, it would already be listed.
None of the examples you provide are reasons to list another summit as a substitute. Here in VK3, we have some summits within a protected water catchment area. Another set are off-limits because the relevant authorities are not issuing off-track walking permits. In other associations, we have summits that are off-limits as they are on islands claimed by 3 or 4 different countries. They are all still P150 summits, though, and therefore listed. Listing a substitute turns a P150 list into a random list of summits.
Access to summits can change over time. Permission to activate seemingly closed summits can be granted. The authorities may suddenly start granting off-track walking permits and a bunch of those summits will be accessible again. Some country might invade and take control of that island and open it up. They’re listed while they’re P150 and not listed when they’re not.
By that argument, though, reducto ad absurdum, we can never add new summits to an association. The summits shall be set at the beginning. That would preclude the nearly 3000 summits we added to ZS, for example. Or the several thousand that went into VK4. Our summit lists are dynamic and based on one criteria only: prominence.
There has been no change of rules. I’ll repeat that because some of you don’t seem to understand it. THERE HAS BEEN NO CHANGE OF RULES.
What has happened is that the summit list of OK has been purged of summits that broke the rules. The summits that have been removed should never have been on the summits list in the first place. They made a mockery of SOTA. The belief seems to be that there is something special about OK that gives it the right to include summits that would not be allowed in any other Association. This is a delusion.
What has been done is entirely within the letter of the rules, and has needed to be done for many years. If there had been any co-operation from OK hams it would have been done years ago. OK hams refused to co-operate so it was done by the MT. That is the end of it, it is done, finished. Recriminations are pointless, they are starting to sound like childish whining. As moderator I am now closing this thread.