Hi All
I note that the long-awaited revised General Rules have now been posted on the Website.
Thanks to Ron VK3AFW for the hint 
73 de Paul G4MD
Somewhat delayed by a computer crash but the culmination of six months work and discussions, with thanks to Elliot K6EL for casting a transatlantic eye over the draft.
Brian
Is it really a good idea to include a complicated Google search URL such as
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=topographic+prominence&safe=active
&biw=832&bih=854&site=webhp&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X
&ei=kukPVdbvMMiz7gaYzoGYDw&sqi=2&ved=0CFwQsAQ&dpr=1
in a long-lived document? Google searches are notoriously fickle and thereās no guarantee that it will give me the same answers as it gave you, or that it will give the same results tomorrow as it gave today.
I just get a page full of randomish images vaguely relating to prominence which donāt seem particularly useful as an introduction to the topic. Is that what is intended?
Moreover, how on earth do you know what parameters such as ei=kukPVdbvMMiz7gaYzoGYDw or ved=0CFwQsAQ are actually encoding? There is much speculation about these parameters, but as far as I know they are not defined. These generated URLs are intended to be clicked soon after you receive them.
Martyn
Brian,
Apologies for my wording which perhaps implies criticism that wasnāt intended. I know the MT and particularly yourself have put a huge amount of work into this major revision. How about āEagerly Anticipatedā 
73 de Paul G4MD
Brian,
Iāve found a typo, well a missing word. In 3.7.1 point 13:
āA valid Activation, however, may take from ā¦ā
Should probably be:
āA valid Activation, however, may take place from ā¦ā
Colin G8TMV
Thanks Colin, Elliot pointed out another. Having only just uploaded (well 10 days ago) we were waiting for the dust to settle before fixing anything, especially as Brianās PC was poorly and Rob has been busy doing other SOTA stuff.
Probably not, things creep in through familiarity never mind the issues of proof-reading. A better, more generic search will be substituted.
I thought much the same Martin. Adding a link to a search is fraught with problems - you have no control over what will turn up - or whether it is helpful - or even correct!
On a point of detail, with reference to para 3.7.1, I am not sure that a Club Licence in the UK is any longer āunder NOV of the holderās Full Licenceā. This may have been the case at one time, but under the latest Ofcom licensing regulations a Club Licence is a complete licence in its own right and is not the subject of any NOV. It is, however, true that only a Full Licence holder is allowed to hold a Full (Club) Licence.
I am the custodian of a Club Licence, and I have two completely separate licence documents: a personal Full Licence and a Full (Club) Licence. They have never been linked by an NOV.
It is also worth mentioning that operation outside of the UK under CEPT rules is not permitted using a UK Full (Club) Licence. Licence document para 2 (1) (b) refers.
73,
Walt (G3NYY)
What me? No No No. Officer I was 18,000 km away at the time. 
Talk to that Brian Bloke, Iām sure he knows something about this.
73
Ron
VK3AFW
Que?
Brian
Paul,
I personally did read your initial notification post to be in the spirit of āEagerly Anticipatedā. I hope Brian saw it that way as well, and was just providing a bit of background information for those of us who can only imagine how much time and effort must have gone into the finished product.
Strangely, the most unexpected encounter was a previously unknown to me word. - āderogationā. So, which one of the MT is a literary scholar? It seems much of what looks new to the GR had already been somewhat recent Reflector discussion points. Now it is bundled in one concise presentation again.
I am surprised the release took about 10 days to be mentioned here. Had it not been for notification at NASOTA, this current release would have been unknown to me till now. I chose to not post anything here about it while strong feelings were being expressed in the derogation discussion. Now does seem like better timing, though certainly those strong feelings have not gone away yet.
Glenn AB3TQ
There was much discussion, led by the more grey haired members of the Management Team, about the word āderogationā. Apparently it is currently used by software gurus (usually without grey hair) to say that a particular release has been superceded by a more current release.
Several of us (and now the general SOTA community) have been educated 
I certainly did see it that way and should have said so earlier.
āDerogationā is one of those lawyers words that I knew the meaning of but never used in anger, so it wasnāt me! As for the other errors mentioned above, what can I say? You read and re-read, and still miss stuff, but eventually the time comes to hand it over to our army of proof readers who soon sort out what you missed! Thanks, guys.
Brian
No that was ādeprecateā but I canāt remember what were discussing at the time. Or what was being deprecated!
The word derogation is also used in French and Spanish.
I work in the automotive industry and French customers may sometimes allow the supplier of a certain product to deliver parts with some of its defined specifications not met. This would represent a parts delivery authorisation under concession => derogation, which in French is ālivraison des piĆØces authorisĆ©e sous dĆ©rogationā.
In Spanish we also use this word for the same purpose āentrega de piezas autorizada bajo derogaciĆ³nā but I have the feel this use has been imported from the French customers.
The most common use of derogation, in Spanish āderogaciĆ³nā, applies to laws: when a law has been subject to derogation, itās no longer valid and canāt be applied from the date of derogation onwards.
Best 73 de Guru.
2 Likes
Has anyone noticed how much this new version of the General Rules is cluttered with this P150m stuff? Conversion of P100 associations to P150 now covers several paragraphs which were not existing in the older versions at all.
To me this very much looks like moving goal posts. One could even suspect, this version was released just now for a specific purpose.
Timescale of some events is quite interesting:
20.03. Discussion about P100/P150 starts in the reflector: p100/p150
30.03. New version of the General Rules is released enforcing P150.
02.04. DM is given an ultimatum to agree to P150
08.04. Discussion on P100/P150 is finally closed.
12.04. Ultimatum for DM ends.
73 de Michael, DB7MM
1 Like
Thatās a nice little conspiracy theory, Michael, but unfortunately the facts are more prosaic. I started collating previous MT discussions and assembling a new version of the GR in October, the new version was then put on the MT reflector for discussion, which continued in a desultory manner until the New Year (punctuated by other business like new Associations and updates etc) then I included the results of the discussions in a final version. This was then passed to Elliot to make sure that it made sense in their version of English across the Atlantic, then a final set of corrections and publication. It is just a coincidence that the prominence marathon was going on at the time, this process is too prolonged and detailed for it to just suddenly get rushed out to make a point. Besides, I only type with two fingers!
No goal posts were moved since the program has always been built on a prominence of 150 metres, but all this has been stated repeatedly in the prominence thread and I am not going to permit this thread to be used to re-ignite that discussion.
Brian
So we will have new rows in the Association Reference Data table?
- association surface area, e.g. 338 424 km^2 for Finland
- P150 summit density (depends how accurately these have been determined)
- P100 rationale (if any), e.g. low density of summits in the association
- P100 area (if any), the border line between P100 and P150 areas
The P100 summits could be distinguished from the P150 ones in the table of summits, but too small font makes the table unreadable. Maybe by using italic font for the P100 summits?
73, Jaakko OH7BF/F5VGL oh7bf at sral dot fi
I guess it may have been better ( to avoid conspiracy theory) to say/announce the revision was there or on way in the April News perhaps??
Night night
Mike