G0AZS joins SOTA MT

We are delighted to announce that Marc Tinkler G0AZS has accepted an invitation to join the SOTA Management Team.

As readers to the SOTA News will be aware, Marc has been developing a method of using ICT to analyse maps to determine exact activation zone areas. Marc has extended this work to be able to determine individual summit eligibility according to the prominence parameter of an association.

Not all countries are as fortunate as UK entities in having an independent body to determine (and regularly review) the lists of hills and mountains based on topographical prominence, so Marc’s ability to double-check borderline summits will be most useful for association managers.

Marc brings a new and important area of expertise to the MT, so please join us in welcoming him to the team.

Tom M1EYP

In reply to M1EYP:
Congratulations Marc on the new position. Sean / M0GIA

In reply to M1EYP:

Congratulations Marc.

Andy
MM0FMF

In reply to M1EYP:
Congratulations Marc!

73
Roger MW0IDX

I am sure you will have your work cut out Marc. Best of luck with getting those summits sorted!

73, Gerald

Congratulations Marc for becoming one of the management team members.

Jimmy M3EYP

In reply to M3EYP

congratulations Marc

Alistair gw0vmz

Marc,

Congratulations but mainly a really big thank you for your commitment to give spare time and expertise to create a new facet to an already excellent and multi-skilled organization. As an activator, I’m sure that if accessible, your work will have the potential to directly assist summit operations, for example in the Birks Fell / Horse Head Moor situation.

Work with maps can be fascinating; I sit and read every new one like a book for hours. I applied to OS in 1965 for an apprenticeship. ‘No thank you, you’re colour blind.’

Good luck with it.

73, John G4YSS.

In reply to M1EYP:

Congratulations Marc

Marc has been developing a method of using ICT to analyse maps to determine >exact activation zone areas. Marc has extended this work to be able to >determine individual summit eligibility according to the prominence >parameter of an association.

It seems that this could be a tool to find or remove summits ? I’m very interested; please can you give me more info (and what is ICT ?).
Thanks !

73 ALain

In reply to F6ENO:
ICT (information and communications technology) is an invention of the English Education System. The rest of the world and non Educationalists in the UK call it IT (Information Technology) Alain :slight_smile:

Roger G4OWG

In reply to F6ENO:
Dear Alain and others

Thank you so much for the positive comments. I must admit I was surprised and delighted to receive the invitation from the MT and I hope that some of my work will make life easier and more productive for all those involved in identifying and classifying summits.

In brief, as well as the work I have done (and reported in the news) identifying activation zone statistics using SRTM data, I have used the same data and some GIS software to analyse the topography of various regions. One of the queries that can be done is to ask the software to identify peaks with a minimum elevation and prominence (even as two separate variables).

This generates a relief map with all qualifying summits visible. A careful review process follows to identify them. I have used this to not only check and verify existing summits but also identify some potential P100 summits in certain areas.

The process I use is not so complex but it can be time consuming (but less so than working with many maps) so I am investigating another more sophisticated method that should generate such lists automatically… but this is still in progress.

One caution I would add about the SRTM data is the fact that is is fine to use for analysis of relative elevation but do not rely on it for absolute elevation information. It is likely give results that differ from official survey elevation data. Also there are some voids and errors in the data so any results should be carefully checked.

So, yes I will be discussing this with AM’s in the appropriate forum and hopefully you will all be seeing some interesting and positive activity regarding the objective review and selection of summits in the future.

I look forward to some exciting work…

73 Marc G0AZS

In reply to G0AZS:

Thanks Marc and Roger,

I’m very impatient to get futher infos about your work. I have downloaded French area data from SRTM website (ASCII ) and I try to understand the format.
I suppose you are using Arcview, or may be you wrote a soft to analyse the datas.

73 Alain F6ENO

In reply to G0AZS:

So, yes I will be discussing this with AM’s in the appropriate forum
and hopefully you will all be seeing some interesting and positive
activity regarding the objective review and selection of summits in
the future.

Marc,

first of all congrats to your appointment.

May I suggest to use your knowledge and tools first of all to make the MT ASAP aware of the impact of their strict P100 enforcement.

Regards,

Gerd

In reply to DF9TS:

In reply to G0AZS:

May I suggest to use your knowledge and tools first of all to make the
MT ASAP aware of the impact of their strict P100 enforcement.

Regards,

Gerd

OK, Gerd, lets look at the impact of the strict P100 enforcement!

In my opinion the main impacts are as follows:

  1. Whatever DX entity a SOTA station operates from, it will be from a genuine SOTA summit and not a lesser summit masquerading as a SOTA summit. To look at it another way an activators score will be a more trustworthy indication of how much effort he/she has had to expend to achieve that score.

  2. The absence of non-qualifying summits will mean that the resentment expressed in the past by some activators at seeing how major scores can be achieved with minor effort in some other Associations will come to an end.

  3. The SOTA program will earn respect because it is strictly and fairly run in accordance with its own rules.

No doubt other people will have their own opinions.

73

Brian G8ADD

In reply to G8ADD:

Brian,

you are missing the curiosity to find out if your good intentions are really fulfilled when applying strict P100 to the DL (alpine) areas.

This is why I suggested that Marc could use his tools for the benefit of the MT rather than explaining the AMs their association’s area (which they might know well).

I spent the day verifying the DL/BE area for P100 with some amazing results. Let yourself be amazed by the consequences of your rule changes, too.

Regards,

Gerd.

In reply to DF9TS:

Gerd, the only relevant rule change was to relax the minimum P150 requirement to minimum P100. If you find that change to a lower prominence value not appropriate to an area you still have the option within the rules to retain P150 or some higher value, P250 perhaps. In an alpine area that may well be a sensible move.

We may be talking at cross purposes here, perhaps it would be better if you could spell out the nature of the results that you found amazing.

73

Brian G8ADD

It was not the SOTA MT that chose to take DL (alps) to P100. This was the request of the DL Association Manager after the SOTA MT set the global minimum as P100.

There are two important points here:

  1. Not all qualifying summits have to be listed with a SOTA reference. For instance, the HB association started with just a few of its eligible summits, gradually adding the rest over a period of time.

  2. DL does not have to have P100 at all. But when the SOTA MT tightened up the rule so that all summits must conform to prominence, DL asked to change to P100. But it doesn’t have to; it may stay as P150 (without the non-P150 summits of course), or as Brian suggests, it may opt to actually go to something like P250, which may be more appropriate for a mountainous area.

SOTA MT sets the minimum prominence that is allowed. The local association sets the association’s prominence level, and selects the summits that will be included.

Like Brian says, I think we need to know specifically what your concerns are Gerd, for at the moment we are only guessing.

73, Tom M1EYP

In reply to G8ADD:

Brian, Tom

sorry for the late answer, I overlooked your postings.

the UIAA Bulletin No. 145 explains the metrics on how the official UIAA list of major alpine 4000er summits was established.

Interestingly the UIAA applies in this bulletin a minimum prominence of 30m (P30!) and make further exceptions where there is e.g. a specific alpinist interest or to include well-known peaks.

You will find this document at http://www.hikr.org/files/40196.pdf - the document is in German, French, Italian and English.

Just to note that SOTA disqualifies summits that the UIAA recognizes - unless this document is out of date.

The consequences of applying P100 to DL/BE are just amazing if not to say depressing. As an example for how P100 as single criteria is wrong in lower mountain areas look at Schneekoppe which has only P60 but with a dominance of 1,6km and is for that rightly regarded by locals as an independant mountain - but not so by SOTA.

I am not intending to discuss P100 again - the MT seems set on this (to put it politely) no matter how abitrary this rule is - would we live in a hexadecimal world than surely it would be P 0x100 meters.

But I would encourage the MT to use Marc’s abilities and tools to understand the consequences and ultimatelly come to better metrics for including/excluding summits.

Please let’s stop discussing P100 in this thread since this does not lead anywhere anyway.

Regards,

Gerd.

In reply to M1EYP:

Hi Tom and others,

DL asked to change to P100. But it doesn’t have to; it may stay as
P150 (without the non-P150 summits of course), or as Brian suggests,
it may opt to actually go to something like P250, which may be more
appropriate for a mountainous area.

We must be careful when talking about prominences.
As you say Tom, It seems appropriate to set more than P150 (P250 in your example) in mountain areas.
I tryed to analyse a mountainous F region, a square of 1° x 1°, that is about 80x80 km
I found 562 summits with P100
356 summits with P150
165 summits with P250
This region (Ecrins) has high mountains, peaking to more than 4000m. With P250, I found that selected summits are mainly between 3000 and 4100m.
I thinks that P250 would result in a non activated region.
More than 3000m is “high mountain” domain and it’s often necessary to walk on glaciers or climb rocks, so it would be reserved to specialists, and surely they will not carry podes and heavy batteries.

I think that SOTA was created for mountainers AND for hikkers.

Best 73
Alain

In reply to F6ENO:

“I think that SOTA was created for mountainers AND for hikkers.”

Indeed, yes Alain, I think you are right.

It is up to the AM in consultation with the participants in his area to select the most appropriate prominence as long as it is at or above P100. I imagine a higher prominence would be selected to keep the number of summits in the area down to a manageable size, but the morphology of the area has to be taken into account.

73

Brian G8ADD