Italy - new references

A friend told me about a change in the italian sota references.
I subtly went to my region (LG Liguria) and looked for those changes.
Some summits had been erased, while some seem to have another id. Surely there are new summits, the only good thing in the job.
For the second time in italian sota history, there’s a mess with lost logs and changes in the activator roll of honour.
What the hell…? Is this possible?
We lost some very big and important mountains…

The Italian association is now formulated to the same rules as all other associations. This means that summits that were not compliant have been deleted and thousands of new summits have been added.

2 Likes

I cannot understand “not compliant” in some circumstances. I need to accurate read the rules and check for errors: where do I find those rules? Can you please give a link…?

It would have been nice to have some form of deprecation of the removed summits instead of a hard delete.
Important summits (from a historical an geographical point of view) have disappeared overnight without any notice, that understandably upsets Italian activators. Maybe it’s not Management Team responsibility but a little more communication would have helped.
I wonder how UK activators would have reacted to such a huge and unexpected change.

Finally, is there any kind of summit “changelog” just to have an idea of how many summits were deleted.

Thanks,
IZ1KSW - Gab

Hi Stefano,
I suppose these are the rules:
http://sota.org.uk/Joining-In/General-Rules

Summits have been removed that did not have 150m topographic prominence.
Summits have been removed were the coordinates were wrong, i.e. no summit at location.

The rules (along with many other docs) are found on the SOTA website, a link to that is at the top of every page on the reflector.

http://www.sota.org.uk/Joining-In/General-Rules

Prominence 150mts is the only important rule i can find. So why are missing all those old summits?
Wrong coordinates? Correct them… It is not hard to find a summit on wikipedia. I am talking about IMPORTANT summits…

They have been corrected.

Activators usually prefer to find summits on location not on wikipedia

Every IMPORTANT summit (important in SOTA terms meaning a summit that rises at least 150m above its surrounding) now has a reference in Italy with a rather good approximation of its coordinates so any activator with a GPS or apps like RRT can find it even if he/she never been to Italy or has no local knowledge of the place

Perhaps an example of an important summit could be given by you that would allow Csaba to demonstrate why it has not been included?

A common problem is confusing prominence with elevation. A mountain that is 2500m high may not have 150m of prominence. Simon G4TJC who heads the summits team has done an excellent blog on this:

http://www.sota.org.uk/Blog/2017/06/19/Finding-Summits---Part-1
http://www.sota.org.uk/Blog/2017/07/23/Finding-More-Summits

Just a few important missing:
Mount Maggiorasca, highest peak of the Liguria Appennino, is missing.

Mount Caucaso, “twin” mountain of Ramaceto (about 7 kms far from it, to the west), is missing.

I understand now: there are problems with coordinates.
Is it better to solve the problems or to erase the summits?
Is it a problem of working group? Do you (sota uk) need real help to avoid these circumstances? It is not the first time that italian activators say to be available to locally help. No one knows the land better than those who live in.

You mean I/ER-313 ?

http://www.sota.org.uk/Summit/I/ER-313

I/LG-316 does not qualify on prominence and has therefore been retired.

We have discussed the I association many times in this forum, and were very clear that this big update was coming. Csaba and his team have used the best available data for checking prominence values and positions, so don’t expect much change in these basic data.

Monte Maggiorasca is very well and valid summit and indeed has a SOTA reference: I/ER-313, if you would just open the map and take a look instead of just calling out you would have already found it. As for why it has an ER reference number and not a LG one, ask the Italian AM, it was his decision on how to divide Italy into regions. From my personal point of view it would have made much more sense to break an association into regions according to mountain range, but Italians preferred administrative boundaries which does go right through summits.

As for Monte Caucaso, it is an 1245m mountain with the key col (see explanations of Simon) at Passo del Gabba at 1108m, you do the math, what is the prominence of it.

This was coming fromthe input of many fellow Italian HAMs, I couldn’t agree more with your statement:

Stefano, it’s not missing. I/ER-313. More of the summit AZ is in Emilia Romagna than Liguria. And the Italian Wiki is optimistic in the height given. The summit height is 1800 not 1809m. English Wiki gives 1799m.

This is why we don’t use Wikipedia as a source. It is not definitive and is subject to uninformed editing.

n.b. the region name is showing incorrectly, an autocorrect changed Romagna to Romania. It will be resolved in a day or two.

Sorry but … which is the right way to ask for reference corrections?

Eg. a quick look at VA references map shows I/VA-119, Cima di Giaf is referenced in the wrong region

73 de IZ3GME Marco

[quote=“IZ3GME, post:15, topic:16074”]
Cima di Giaf is referenced in the wrong region
[/quot

I think you are correct Marco. Should be VE not VA (typo) and will be corrected in a day or so. Try to avoid activating it till the ref gets corrected :wink:

Hi everybody,
i see the issue of the prominence but frankly i’m unhappy which many important mountains in my region (Liguria) there are no in the list as before…Mount Reixa, Monte Argentea, Monte Rama and others…which i repeat again: was SOTA with a reference!
73 Davide iz1fum

This update corrects many mistakes in the earlier listings. We are applying the P150 criterion as accurately as we can to be fair and consistent. Italy has too many mountains to qualify for P100 status. For each retirement we have added >9 new summits.

Ciao Gab,
It is easy to found the deleted summits.
Just get the file “summits.kmz” on you computer
Open Googl earth and tick the Deleted I/LG box.
You will found I/LG-301,302,304,306,307,308,310,312,313,315 to 320,324,327,328,330,332,334,335,336,337,341,344.
25 summits deleted as I/LG-306 is now I/LG-002

I have activated some of these deleted summits, and i can say that they really are not compliant with the P150 rules.
Ciao tutti, Gerald

Zoltan,
were you somehow involved in the review process of the Italian summits?

IZ1KSW - Gab